Farmers of all stripes crave consistency, which has been in short supply recently. The sugaring season of 2017 adhered to this rule. Sap ran in January and we could have made syrup then if we had been…

Editor’s Note: This blog is by our friend Eric Aldrich. You can see more of his images on the Hancock Wildlife Cam on Facebook. For nearly 10 years, I had been camera-trapping year-round,…

In a world where modern technology can sweep us off our feet, the Biltmore stick is proof that simple, old-fashioned tools can still be of value. It is portable, affordable, and easy to use, making it…

Black bear cubs are born in late January or February, weighing about eight ounces. The mother has six teats, and the newborn cubs crawl to the ones closest to her pelvis. Later, as the cubs get older,…

If you know anything about wild edible plants, chances are you know about wild leeks. Also known as ramps, the wild leek (Allium tricoccum) is a rock star among wild foods. Festivals celebrate its…

In the northern forest of New England, a big gray cat crouches silently in a dense thicket of fir along a snowshoe hare run. Its pointed ears, topped with long tufts of black hair, twitch as it…

If you wish to see tracks and sign of ruffed grouse, find the food. In early spring, when the deepest snowpack still lingers in the woods, chicken-sized grouse can be seen ponderously perching on…

Every year around this time, my husband, kids and I haul out the tent blind from our garage and set it up in the field in front of our house. We toss in a few folding chairs, a thermos, maybe a…

Photographer Abby Rowlee got this shot on an April night at her family’s sugarhouse (Hi-Hollow Maples) in Reading, Vermont, where the Rowlee family has lived and sugared for eight generations.…

Anyone who has paid even a little attention to plants and trees in late winter and early spring knows how responsive they are to temperature. In years when the winters are warm, many trees and other…

Home sweet home. What animal lives here?

We had our annual maple open house weekend last weekend, and at one point a group of older women stopped by and visited – told us stories of the sugaring they grew up with. “Lot more work…

Your March photos captured images of often elusive creatures: a great grey owl, an otter popping up from under the ice, and - just in time for April 1 - the legendary North Woods kiwi bird. From…

Trees speak many languages, their leaves whooshing in summer and trunks creaking in winter. At the onset of spring, trees become sounding boards for courtship. Before the thrushes and warblers and…

Gutter pipes full of soggy peat show up on the bench by my office each March.  This means one thing: my colleague Peter Hope’s Saint Michael’s College students are about to experience…

Imagine ten nearly round white eggs snug in a hollow tree, lined with soft feathers plucked from the mother’s breast. The hen carefully tends the two-inch eggs for about a month until the chicks…

In their early days, game cameras were marketed mostly to hunters looking to get a leg up in understanding the population of specific game species in their favorite (or secret) hunting areas.…

A two-part question: What type of cones are these, and why are they in a pile?

So the crazy weather continues, though of late it’s been too cold instead of too hot. By putting the temperatures from the last two weeks side by side with the temperatures from the previous two…

It was probably 105 degrees in the shade – a typical July afternoon in southwestern Oklahoma. I crept closer to the rocky outcrop where I suspected the bobcat was trying to hide from the heat.…