Blog and News

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…

So we got our first run the end of last week, and made our first syrup on March 14. That was also the day we finally finished tapping, thanks in large part to our friends Ginny and Court who…

We usually start tapping our sugarwoods around February 1. This year it was five below zero that morning, and so there was no rush getting out there. If it’s too cold when you tap, you…

One of the biggest criticisms of the media these days is that it’s objective to a fault. Consider the flack some editors have taken recently for giving equal time to both sides of the…

This winter, a barred owl has been loitering around my house. My husband arbitrarily declared it a male (there’s no easy way to sex an owl) and we dubbed him Squinty McBold.…

If you were to describe deep, January cold to someone who’d never experienced it before, you might point out that you can hear it. Get below zero and the snow starts to squeak under…

Editors Dave Mance and Patrick White are holed up in their offices this week, working away on final drafts for the Northern Woodlands spring issue. So now seemed a good time to stage a blog…

On the seventh of December, men stood in the garage and said: “Yep, snow before Pearl Harbor Day; it’s gonna be a good winter.” Then, armed with electrical cords, blow…

I went through a wicked dinosaur phase in my pre-teen years, and was convinced that if my future as an NFL quarterback didn’t materialize I’d make a lateral career move and become…

My old boss Walter Medwid recently published this op-ed raising the issue of Fish and Wildlife funding in Vermont. It’s a wonky issue, I’ll grant you, but it’s something that…

Vermont's deer rifle season opens Saturday, which means our editor was distracted all week at work before finally disappearing Thursday night. Why the early start? This essay from 2009…

The lab (okay, garage) here at Northern Woodlands was the scene last week of some high-tech testing. Using the latest in scientific hardware – a small glass vial purchased on Amazon for…

As I write this I’m listening to a tractor trailer back up to the office; it’s here to deliver the first shipment of our new seasonal nature calendars. I have a sample on my desk,…

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is...For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” -…

This October 17-19th, on the shores of Lake Morey, authors, editors, educators and nature enthusiasts will gather for a weekend conference focused on writing about the nature of our region,…