Magazine Series

At a recent foresters’ conference, I was discussing with a friend a report we’d heard on the future of Maine’s forest products industry. He noted that, while the volume of wood harvested…

The woods road’s worst enemy is water. It makes travel difficult, and if it’s not diverted, rainwater can wash away a road surface in a single summer storm. You can avoid problems…

Giant sugar maples line each side of the abandoned town road above our farm – gnarled veterans with ropy bark and knobby knees. When the fog is just right on spring and autumn mornings,…

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…

A landowner once phoned to ask me to visit his property to see all the good work he’d done extending his landscaping efforts from his yard into the surrounding woods. He was pleased with…

Most of us have been at least annoyed, if not infuriated, by porcupines from time to time. Their desperate need for salt in the summer months gets them in big trouble around the house. They…

A forest community is the net result of a wide variety of relationships among and between different organisms interacting in a particular place over time. The key word here is relationships.…

One of the great pleasures of wandering in the undeveloped woodland in our area is finding cellar holes, barn foundations, and all kinds of old fences, and imagining what a particular place…

I was given two CDs for Christmas. The first, by Louis Armstrong, begins with his classic, “What a Wonderful World.” Hearing it makes me know what it means to experience tears of joy. The…

Before the trees leaf out is a great time to walk your property lines, a practice that should be an annual event for all landowners. Locating property boundaries often requires the ability to…