Early April is an unpredictable month in the North Country, a time for back-and-forth tag between the remnants of winter chill and spring warmth. Yet within the unpredictability there is certainty.…

Our friend Bryan Pfeiffer submitted this intriguing picture. OK, botanists, what is it?

Unlike cartoon springtime, which is lush and instant – a character in a doorway rubbing his eyes while flowers unfurl and bluebirds sing – real life springtime is reserved, somber, even…

Early spring in this part of the world is a rugged season, a time when snow banks crumble, back roads become mud holes, and steam begins to issue from sugarhouses. Mud and maple syrup go together for…

For some, spring begins with the flow of maple sap, or maybe the arrival of robins or redwing blackbirds. For inveterate gardeners the new season never really starts until the soil can be turned. The…

This tool was found recently leaning up against a tree in a forest. What’s it used for?

The act of tapping a tree can be a mystical experience. The tree, so often just a drab giant in the landscape, a taken-for-granted piece of architecture, little different than a house or a fence, is…

Winter’s effect on animals isn’t always noticeable. Often, it’s because they’ve flown south, are hibernating, or are hunkered down, having reduced their activity to cope with…

Last month, while taking advantage of the open winter to cut brush around the edges of our pasture, I thought back to one of my favorite lectures in college. The professor was a Maine native teaching…

At a recent meeting of maple producers in New England, I asked the question, “How many people would never tap a red maple?” Half the audience raised their hands. There were a number of…

The big buzz this spring in maple sugarmaking circles involves the new check-valve spouts that many sugarmakers with vacuum systems are trying for the first time. The spiles were invented by Tim…

Working outside on a sunny afternoon in early March, I’ll catch the scent of somethinglike burnt sugar, and it will take me a minute to remember what it is. It will have been a year since I…

I like to think of Sarah Knock as a topographer. She records the surface features of water as light purls across it, showing us with amazing verisimilitude the fusion of light and liquid. Knock…

When Rita and I left the fleshpots of Boston and Cambridge and moved to Temple nearly forty years ago (forty years!), we made that move with the blessing of our friend Molly Gregory. Molly lived in a…

Sharpening an ax is not difficult, but it does require a basic understanding of how the business end of an ax works. An ax is almost never used to cut perpendicularly through wood fibers; instead, the…

In forestry circles, monocultures don’t get high marks. Most planted forests have just one kind of tree, and because of this they are often looked down upon as biological Levittowns: boring…

If this story were a movie, it might best begin with a flashback. After the opening credits, perhaps backed by an ominous soundtrack, we’d be transported back two years, to a happier time before…

When visitors arrived at Ed Lanigan’s 309-acre tree farm in Alton, New Hampshire, he waved them over to a row of sugar maples he had tapped a couple of weeks earlier. The March breeze had a…

Every community has its hubs: those people who tie disparate strands of the network together, who collect and distribute information. For the forest products industry in northern New England, one of…

For six wintry months, trees have appeared as woodblock reliefs or iron sculptures, their bare limbs framed against a cold horizon. But as spring unfolds, stark branches morph into soft beauty.…