Blog and News

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).…

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…