Blog and News

When I was very young I used to scare the heck out of myself by getting lost in the woods near where we lived. Instead of going to scary movies, like some kids, I’d head off again and…

Over the years in Northern Woodlands, we have revisited the subject of “selective cutting.” When loggers advertise their services, they often use the phrase, selective harvesting or…

While browsing a newspaper recently, I was encouraged to read the headline: “State moves to regulate ‘captive hunting.’” It detailed the fact that after 10 years of debate, the Vermont…

Happy New Year from Northern Woodlands!

A non-profit group in the Adirondacks, the Adirondack Council, is making it possible for ordinary folks to do something proactive about global warming. For a minimum of $25, you can purchase a…

Our Autumn 2008 issue features a beautiful photo essay on our forest friends building their food reserves for winter called “Harvesting in a Time of Plenty”. Our website now boasts a…

I cut a mature buck track walking a scrape line opening weekend – a deer heavy enough that he left deep imprints in the soggy forest floor. He was headed uphill to bed, and because of…

A few weeks back, The New Yorker ran a fascinating story on illegal logging, with a focus on the trade in stolen logs in China and Russia. This clearly is a huge problem rife with underworld…

One Friday afternoon this past July, a micro-burst hailstorm descended on our farm. I noticed right away that most of our vine crops had been decimated. The following morning, I noticed that a…

On Oct. 28th, our staff, our publication partners, state agency exhibitors, and landowners celebrated our new Vermont version of The Place You Call Home. Folks traveled from all over the state…

This past summer, my husband and I moved to Corinth, VT, from one of those flat cities to the south. I began working as the Administrative Coordinator at Northern Woodlands in September, and…

We’re all familiar with the impossibly loud blasts emitted by tiny spring peepers in March. But have you noticed that peepers peep again in early October, not from ponds, but from the…

Adrenalin is a beautiful thing. At Northern Woodlands, we are quite accustomed to the rhythms of a quarterly cycle. Four publications a year works just fine. Develop the stories, sell the ads,…

My friend J was lucky enough to draw a Vermont moose tag last year; luckier still to take a strange-looking-but-in-a-good-way bull on the fourth day of the season. The bull was 10.5 years old,…

We’ve received all sorts of feedback on Dave Mance’s story on hunting camps in the Autumn issue. One wrote that “I wanted the hunting camp article to go on and on.” Going to camp means…

There’s that moment, when you’re riding on a Ferris wheel, when the gondola you’re riding in pauses at the circle’s highest point. The engine stops and you just dangle…

During summer trips to visit family, from home in Vermont to Connecticut, and then from home to Maine and back, I’ve been checking out a lot of roadside plants. That is to say, a lot of…

Last Saturday, I went down to Woodstock for the 10th anniversary celebration of Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park. The event was also the unveiling of their new Forest Center,…

We rented a hydraulic splitter last week for processing firewood. It was the first time I’d ever used one. The task at hand was a nearly two-century-old, field-grown sugar maple that had…

Hi! My name’s Dave Mance III. I’m the new Managing Editor at Northern Woodlands magazine, which is to say that I’m the new Anne Margolis (except not quite as organized and, well, a man).…