Vacuum tubing systems have revolutionized maple sugar production, and more and more sugarmakers are getting into the game, drawn by the allure of making an average of .4 gallons of syrup per…
Magazine Series
How to Help Your Best Trees Grow
If we were to arrange optimal conditions for growing the perfect tree, we would provide a site that’s a perfect match for the species’ particular needs. It would begin its life in…
The Forecast Calls for Birds
Songbirds pouring from the skies before dawn. Thousands of hawks gliding past a mountain summit. Rare oceanic birds blown in to shore. Birdwatching like this doesn’t necessarily begin…
Fiddlehead Season
The emerald green stems of newborn ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) poking out of the decaying leaves on the forest floor are one of the early signs of much-awaited spring in the…
At Work Milling Ship Masts with “Duke” Besozzi
When Charles “Duke” Besozzi looks at a big tree, he sees bowsprits, masts, and decking in its contours. This is a change from what he used to see when he was a commercial logger…
How Can I Tell if My Woods are Old Growth?
Old-growth forests, sometimes simply called “old growth,” are just that: really old woods. Accordingly, they are marked by the presence of exceptionally old, typically…
Dirt and Blossom
In the late 1920s, Franklin and Leslie had a lean-to camp in the Toma country, smack in the middle of nowhere at all, back then. Timber got moved on water in those long decades before the…
From the Center
As you read this, presses are rolling on our newest publication, More Than a Woodlot: Getting the Most from Your Family Forest. The book is written by Northern Woodlands founder and former…
Ghost Moose: Winter Ticks Take Their Toll
The tracks and splattered blood stains in the snow told the story. Hours before, a cow moose trotted through the deep late-March snowpack and, where she passed, drops of blood, patches of…
The Great Glyphosate Debate
It seems almost quaint, or perhaps naïve, to imagine a time, not too too long ago, when black and white film strips proclaimed the wonders of chemistry and suburban children danced…