Blog and News

G and I were out for a walk the other night, talking about and wondering why the sky has been so beautiful for the last month. Evening after evening of just impossible grandeur. Every night…

We’re doing a big story on white pine blister rust in the Autumn issue, and in tracking down art for the piece came across a cool old type-written report on eastern white pine that was…

The birch bark peelers arrived in a pickup pulling a covered trailer. There was a 4-wheeler in it, a smaller trailer, and sheets of cardboard and stickers for the bark. They unloaded the…

I went on vacation this past week down to southern Massachusetts, a place that’s really a different world to a guy from Vermont: the land flat or gently rolling towards the sea; the…

I’ve been trying to line things up to build a house for a few years now, and am getting nowhere fast. I’ve made some recent progress milling hardwood, though, that I’ll…

It’s often implied, if it’s not said outright, that nature is a cruel, cold place. We’ve all seen trees wrapped around each other fighting for light; late frosts that leave…

I went to a tick talk last night in southwestern Vermont that was sponsored by Bennington College and the Bennington County Sustainable Forestry Consortium. Kathleen LoGiudice, a researcher…

You do this job long enough and you turn into Andy Rooney, I’ve decided, which is to say that you slowly become some crotchety old guy who gets mad at the news and wants to tell everyone…

We boiled for the last time this season last Saturday – a raw, cold day. It froze hard that night, but Sunday rose up into the 60s. It felt like the end of sugaring season and the first…

There’s still an element of magic in sugaring, still plenty of things we don’t understand. Take how weather relates to a run. The book says you need a freeze-thaw cycle to build…