Skip to Navigation Skip to Content
Decorative woodsy background

Blog and News

Dispatch from the Sugarwoods, 2019, Part 2

Last sugaring season started early, and it lurched like a 16-year-old learning to drive a stick. It was too cold, then too warm, then too cold – that cycle over and over. We made syrup…

Spring Springing

Phenology – the study of when things happen in a particular season – is endlessly interesting, but especially so after a long winter, when we’re starved for change. We know…

Dispatch from the Sugarwoods, 2019

Have you ever wondered why we start the new year in winter, in the middle of the season of death, instead of in spring, the season of birth? Or instead of in fall, at the peak of…

Northern Woodlands Woods Savvy Quiz Answers and Winners Announced!

This past October, we put together a quiz that tested readers’ knowledge of topics we’d covered over the preceding year in Northern Woodlands magazine, The Outside Story weekly…

Orchid Overload

The Spring issue of Northern Woodlands just reached mailboxes this week, hopefully providing a welcome change of scenery from the wintery conditions outside your window. Among the most hopeful…

Cold Case

Recently, we discovered this barred owl near the Northern Woodlands office – dead, frozen, and wedged in a tree cavity roughly four feet from the ground. The head was pulled back into…

Murky Waters

Earlier this winter, Paul Smith College’s Adirondack Watershed Institute (AWI) published a report on water quality for 21 lakes in Hamilton County. The county occupies the lower, central…

Wood and Its Carbon Debt, Again

This letter came in to us the other day. To the Editors: By this time, you and many of your Vermont readers have most likely heard the podcast on VPR on wood heat. It was a good and thorough…

A Winter Tussle

Last weekend, there was a tussle in the lilac bush in our front yard, and when the snow settled, what was revealed was one weasel and one very agitated red squirrel. The weasel ducked into the…

Winter Waterfowl

I have yet to hear of any snowy owls nearby this winter, although they’re on the move in the Northeast; Cornell’s eBird site includes recent sightings along the New England coast,…