Blog and News

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).…

A lot of you know Ken Gagnon – he’s a real nice guy. He’s got a family-owned mill in Pittsford, Vermont. When I called him recently about renewing his usual ad in the magazine for…

In years past, I’ve come across nice patches of morels in our woods at the end of May and into June. They seem to respond to a good dose of rain, and a few days after a storm…

I live something of a double life: member of the Northern Woodlands team by day and owner/operator of an organic vegetable farm by night. (Time-wise, it’s actually the other way around.)…

Back when we started Northern Woodlands (as Vermont Woodlands in 1994), we hardly knew what we were getting in for as far as the business end of it goes. If you had told me I would be going to…

It might seem odd that a person would really and truly enjoy Green-up day. Around here, it’s on the first Saturday in May that people don gloves and walk the roads to pick up the assorted…

It’s always a treat when one of your alumni makes good. That’s how I felt when I just read a glowing review of Catherine Tudish’s new novel, American Cream. Catherine worked…

A few Saturdays ago, I attended the third annual Vermont Town Forest Project summit. It was held in Hinesburg, Vermont, a town that lies about half in the rising, forested slopes of the Green…

When observers of goings-on at the State House in Albany, New York, recall the events of March 10, 2008, chances are they will remember it as the day the news broke about Eliot Spitzer. They…

As we worked on editing the Outdoor Wood Boiler article in the current issue of the magazine, I began to think seriously about installing such a unit on our farm. We live in the midst of 90…

When you buy a car, you receive an owner’s manual. When you buy an appliance like a refrigerator, you get an owner’s manual. It makes sense. As the proud new owner of an expensive…

Last Sunday afternoon, I picked up Castle Freeman’s Go With Me, and started reading it around 4:00. I finished sometime after 9:00, stopping only to throw more wood in the woodstove. I…

We’ve been developing an article for the upcoming issue about outdoor wood boilers, and the topic has been driving us a bit crazy. On the one hand, many of these boilers are terribly smoky…

It happened again the other day. I was reading a newspaper article, and the writer used the word “forester” to describe a person who owns forestland. I’ve also seen forester used…

Winter will officially begin on Saturday, but it is already kicking in around here, making those of us of a certain age reminisce about the snowstorms of yore. I remember winters in Syracuse…

I’m a print guy, but I haven’t always been a print guy. My first involvement with media was nearly 30 years ago, when I learned the nuts and bolts of video production in the late 1970s at…