Ten years ago, I led a field trip to Silver Lake State Park in Barnard, Vermont. A few parents and a gaggle of children – bedecked in flippers and waterwings – lugged our gear to shore.…

I was drinking around four gallons per year before I realized I had a problem. I should have kicked the habit right then, but instead I started making my own and was soon up to six gallons per year.…

As anyone who has ever planted a few apple trees knows all too well, growing apples can be a perplexing and frustrating endeavor. The trouble is that apples are very attractive to many of…

It’s a pleasant Saturday morning, and a small suburban park is filling with people. While the adults set up lawn chairs and dig out soccer equipment, the youngsters frolic on the grass. Just…

Trees of New England by Charles Fergus is not another field guide, and thank goodness for that. If I were to lug around all that are available these days, or even a selection of those of most…

In our Autumn 2004 Discoveries, we reported on research suggesting that friction and gravity constrain evapotranspiration in trees and thus limit tree height – to 426.51 feet in the redwoods…

The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust the…

In last summer’s Discoveries, we reported that overly abundant white-tailed deer are inflicting great damage on forest understory plants, like ginseng. What are the implications of a forest…

Well before first light on an icy winter morning, a tractor-trailer unit wheels out of the yard at the Claire Lathrop sawmill in Bristol, Vermont, and heads for Barre Town Elementary and Middle School…

Last fall, I went to a nearby wetland with a pair of clippers and cut twigs from one willow shrub after another. It wasn’t hard to tell the willows from the non-willows because willows are the…

Odell, a biologist and wetlands specialist, is Wildlife Manager of Region 8 of the New York State Bureau of Wildlife, and we were looking for signs of successful wood duck breeding in a section of…

Jon Raymond had some problems. About 100 of them, each one covered with blue feathers. Those who know him might not have found this surprising. He is on the board of directors of the New York State…

Since the time of the first humans, wood has served as an important fuel source. We relied upon it first for heat, today for electricity, and tomorrow maybe for liquid fuels. Wood used simply as a…

Everybody knows that tree species vary in their ability to tolerate shade. It’s easy to find shady places in the woods where shade-tolerant species such as American beech and eastern hemlock…

The U.S. Forest Service has finalized its latest Forest Plan for the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and Maine, and you can be excused for having missed it. Compared with the public…

The six New England states and New York each have some sort of property tax system in place specifically for owners of forestland. These programs are generally referred to as “current use”…

I’ve always considered myself an early riser, but along the way I’ve learned that early is a relative thing. When turkey season comes along in May, I feel like a slug-a-bed. It’s…

Many people in the Northeast were puzzled last July to find a shiny, sticky goo coating the leaves of all kinds of trees. When the cause was discovered, it just made the situation more baffling. An…

The great secret of education is to combine mental and physical work so that one kind of exercise refreshes the other. – Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) As a self-employed woodworker and…

You’ll find three stories in this issue of Northern Woodlands covering the growing potential for biomass. If these improved prospects for producing more energy and other products from low grade…