Blog and News

The spin doctors on either side of the bioenergy divide have been hard at work spinning a recently released study on biomass sustainability into whatever the PR equivalent of gold is. A few…

Do you remember how wet it was last summer, and how we were all wondering about the affect of the rain on the forest? (If not, refresh your memory with this 2009 blog, where we ponder the…

As I’m writing this, a bill that would ban felt-soled waders is sitting on Vermont Governor Jim Douglas’s desk. If he signs it – and there’s no indication that he won’t –…

Have things seemed early to you this year? Early buds? Early peepers? Early trips to the drugstore to buy Claritin? Turns out your hunch is accurate, at least about the buds and the Claritin.…

It’s not often that we’re presented with an editorial angle that lets us segue into the world of sports, but the rising furor over maple bats in baseball presents just such an…

I’ve put in my time in the invasives war: digging wild chervil, clipping buckthorn, hacking at Japanese knotweed. I’ve been reasonably relentless, and many times have pointed out these bad…

Unlike cartoon springtime, which is lush and instant – a character in a doorway rubbing his eyes while flowers unfurl and bluebirds sing – real life springtime is reserved, somber,…

The act of tapping a tree can be a mystical experience. The tree, so often just a drab giant in the landscape, a taken-for-granted piece of architecture, little different than a house or a…

A friend of the magazine contacted me recently with a deceptively simple question: how do I know when to start tapping my maple trees? The literal answer, “whenever you can take time off…

I knew very little about Haiti before the tragic recent earthquake brought the county to the front pages of the local paper. I still know very little, although I’m learning, slowly. To…

Each time we send out a newsletter, maybe 300 people look at the What in The Woods is That picture, between 50 and 100 regularly venture guesses, and about a half dozen send us in-depth…

We were on the ice by 6:30, loaded for bear with tip-ups, axes, augers, bait fish, cooking implements and the likes, the three of us heading out across a virgin snowpack on a lake that seemed…

In mid-December, a delegation from the Vermont Forestry Division and the Agency of Agriculture traveled to Quebec to meet with emerald ash borer (EAB) specialists immersed in the Carignan…

“The vast commercial enterprise and history of logging in Vermont seems like a hidden powerhouse without the public face (and attendant sympathy) that agriculture has here. My hope is that…

For years, frustrated log-truck drivers in Vermont have struggled with arcane federal weight limits on interstate highways. The weight limits kept log trucks off the interstates, and instead…

After a pathetic November that featured weather straight out of an Al Gore picture, winter proper came to the Northern Forest this week. Here again was December snow – the kind people…

It’s not uncommon for pictures of hunter-killed buck deer to show up in my email inbox; what was strange about this case was the title of the email: antlered doe. As you can see from the…

Consult any deer camp journal and you’ll read that each year camp is “opened” the Friday before hunting season, as in: “11-13-09 Joe opened camp around 10 A.M..”…

While sawtimber mills and markets continue to struggle, the fuelwood portion of the forest economy is growing slowly. Recent good news out of Maine has it that International WoodFuels plans to…

“Thanks for coming with me,” said Trev. “Sorry we couldn’t close the deal.” His voice was tired then, and a touch disappointed. He was thinking wistfully about the four straight days…