Which Bird Made That Nest? A Bygone Industry: Chemicals from Wood How to Make a Holiday Wreath Dissecting an Ice-damaged Tree Snow Fleas, Deer Yards, Scotch Pine, and much more

“It’s a weird time in the wood industry,” said Bob De Geus, wood utilization specialist with Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. He paused then, trying to…

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…

On a walk through a still, snowy sugarbush, the peacefulness can be overwhelming; everything looks to be in good order. But all may not be as perfect as it seems. In any sugarbush, there is a good…

On a raw December day in northern Vermont, with a nor’easter bearing down on New England, the kitchen in Sarah Taparauskas’s circa 1850s farmhouse is a warm, inviting place to spend an…

No birdwatcher’s life is complete without experiencing the penetrating gaze of a great gray owl. Even a glance from those lemon-yellow eyes will cut through your Carhartts. Designed for the…

I have been managing woodlots in central Vermont since 1987, and in that time, two major ice storms have hit my area. Those two storms damaged thousands of acres across the region, and many landowners…

Some stands of Scots pine in Europe (that’s what it’s called in its native range) are gorgeous, with straight, unbranching trunks that self-prune nicely, revealing the lovely orange bark…

Are women different from men when it comes to owning and managing a forest? If so, do those differences matter? With more than 60 percent of private woodland owners in the U.S. older than age 55, we…

Every few years, I’m treated to a recurring dream, an archetypal dream that I’ve heard others describe as well. In it, I have just moved into a new house, and as I settle into my new…

“Follow the money” was Deep Throat’s advice to Woodward and Bernstein as they investigated the Watergate break-in, and it has also been the watchword for people trying to figure out…

No hints on this one. What in the woods is it?

Conventional wisdom says that if you put up a bird feeder on Nov. 1 and take it down on April 1, you won’t have a problem with marauding bears, because they hibernate between those dates. After…

A few years back, a group of amateur history buffs spent the better part of two days dragging an enormous hunk of metal off a densely wooded mountain in southern Vermont. The area is referred to on…

Consult any deer camp journal and you’ll read that each year camp is “opened” the Friday before hunting season, as in: “11-13-09 Joe opened camp around 10 A.M..” If…

When we bought our old farmhouse 40 years ago, its source of water was a spring that gushed from a hillside. The water seemed clean thanks in part to gravel that had been placed on the muddy bottom…

Over the past 100 years, the Maine Forest Service has published 14 editions of a book (originally a booklet) called The Forest Trees of Maine. To celebrate the centenary, the newest edition has been…

The adult emerald ash borer (EAB) is a beautiful, metallic-green beetle, too pretty, it would seem, to be so deadly. And yet, in its larval form, the EAB has killed millions of ash trees since its…

When scientists and students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hammered a nail into a tree on campus and wired it to a metal rod in the ground, they confirmed Internet reports they had…

While sawtimber mills and markets continue to struggle, the fuelwood portion of the forest economy is growing slowly. Recent good news out of Maine has it that International WoodFuels plans to break…