Tree bark can act as a record of all sorts of events: lightning, fire, mechanical scrapes, and even the brief spark of youthful passion, carved with pocketknife, complete with heart, arrow, and…

Sheldon and Penelope Pennoyer will tell you they moved to their hilltop land in Greenfield, New Hampshire, because they wanted their boys to do farm chores. Back when their first child was born,…

Knots in trees occur where a branch has been surrounded by continued growth of the bole. When the bole is sawn into lumber, or peeled to make veneer, the branch sections included in the lumber or…

“The arrival of the emerald ash borer is seemingly imminent, and there are no known methods of control,” warns Peter Smallidge of New York’s Cooperative Extension service at Cornell…

Travel north beyond the rocky coastline of Maine, beyond Baxter State Park and the mighty Mt. Katahdin, through the industrial forests that have sustained generations of Maine loggers and their…

Unless you are a fanatical birder, you may not be able to differentiate between the five species of brown thrushes found in northern New England and New York. All have wings and backs of varying…

As oil prices climb to once unimaginable levels, and we watch electricity prices continue their upward march, entrepreneurs are flocking to biomass energy. Using wood to create energy is nothing new…

It’s my pleasure to tell you about a special honor bestowed by the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, on the founders of Northern Woodlands. Steve Long and Ginny Barlow received the…

With a small investment in feeders and seed, we can attract colorful visitors throughout the stark, white winter. But feeders can also attract a number of uninvited guests to the table. Bird seed is…

Counting trees accurately is an essential skill for people working in the woods. Does a woodlot contain valuable timber? Are the trees growing densely or sparsely? Which tree species are dominant? A…

The whir of drills and the tap of hammers will soon be resonating from sugarbushes. Clouds of roiling steam and the first waft of fresh syrup won’t be far behind. As the 2008 season kicks off,…

Quick – what hardiness zone are you in? If you happen to be a farmer or gardener, you’ll know the answer right off the bat, and it will probably be “four” if you live in New…

We had been looking for owls since before dawn. Mars, gleaming orange in the east, was visible as we pulled into the deep shadows of a hemlock stand. We played digital snippets of a barred owl…

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…

Our fickle New England weather often appears in daily discourse. When boasting about having endured one meteorological extreme or another, we sometimes stretch the limits of our credibility. One…

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 and…

Picture Charlie Browne, executive director of the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, walking along the edge of the Connecticut River on a winter day at first light. Perhaps the snow crunches…

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…

The adage that your enemies know your weaknesses best is especially true in the case of plants and predators that have co-evolved. As the predators evolve new strategies for attack, plants counter…

Perhaps the first thing that can be said about the winter sky is that, relatively speaking, it’s pretty boring. Discounting the occasional sun dog or freak crack of lightning in the heart of a…