You can’t shake a stick in New England these days without hitting someone in the energy field who wants to talk biomass. But what exactly is biomass? And is it a green source of energy?…

Reader Susan Elliot took this picture at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center this past weekend while attending the 115th Annual Meeting of the Vermont Botanical and Bird Club. What is it?

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 unusually…

City dwellers and puddles don’t mix; we country folk are more tolerant. In wet weather we drive through one muddy morass after the next, uttering unprintable words, yet few of us would exchange…

Old-Fashioned Bee Lining Tending a Woodland Garden Income Sources from Your Forestland Which Caterpillar Becomes Which Butterfly? Climbing Bears, Chainsaw Gas Controversy, a $1,600 Maple Tree, and…

My son Seth and I have a tradition. Each summer, we choose a different mountain and a campground near it, pack our gear into my subcompact car, and set off on a father-son adventure. Two summers ago,…

These prices are for #1 hardwood logs, at least 8 feet long, with three clear faces and a minimum 12-inch top diameter. In the timber world, this is a log of average quality, not a prime sawlog and…

The primary goal of natural history illustration is scientific accuracy. Since the work is used to educate, it must portray a species with precision and a high level of detail. If it’s…

Mainers like to brag about our lakes and ponds and rivers and streams, and with good reason. We have lots of all of them, and I haven’t met any I didn’t like. Granted, some of our waters…

Did you know that a chunk of green firewood can be over 50 percent water? Of course you did. You’ve tried to burn that wood, and it was no more combustible than celery. So now you season your…

Black bears are built to climb. Their prodigious upper body strength, coupled with a unique skeletal adaptation, enables bears to scurry squirrel-like up tall trees in seconds. The ursid shoulder…

Across great distances they migrate, powered on a diet of arthropods and a blast of determination. When they stop to visit, they are among the most watchable of all wildlife, feeding and mating in…

My early knowledge of sassafras brings to mind the legendary blind men describing an elephant. One man touches the tail, another the flank, another the tusk, and in the end, there’s no agreement…

There was a time when people who lived in rural areas and owned acreage made their living from the land. Subsistence living was neither an alternative lifestyle nor a quaint anachronism. It was what…

Connecticut forester, logger, and all-around woodskeeper Bob Haines abides by two principles: waste not, want not; and take the time to do it right. Haines has an aura of calm thoughtfulness. His…

In the spring of 1780, Jonathan Carpenter and his cousin set out from their home in southern Massachusetts to start a new life in Pomfret, Vermont. On May 13, they bought 100 acres of land, and two…

Honeybees have been domesticated for millennia, but they don’t always rely on the housing beekeepers provide them in exchange for harvesting their honey. Honeybees remain wild enough to survive…

In December, 2009, a few days after we published a story in our winter issue about wood industry woes and low mill prices, a logger in northern New England fired up his chainsaw and cut down a nice…

Photographer Jim Block photographed this blue-gray gnatcatcher in Lebanon, New Hampshire, as the bird was collecting tent caterpillar silk to use for her nest. While the gnatcatcher is a common bird,…

Shade tolerance is the relative capacity of tree species to compete for survival under shaded (which is to say, less-than-optimal) conditions. It is a tree trait, a functional adaptation that varies…