Site Discussions

Great article!  It really captured the essence and scope of the forest products industry and how it has evolved over time.  Mr. Hull’s lifetime of work in the sawmill and the forest is a great American success story.  Thank you.

Very nice article.  It gave a good feel for paddling in the flood plains!

Thanks for the simple easy to build bat house plans.

I am a big fan of Liz Thompson’s book, ‘Wetland, Woodland, Wildland: A Guide to the Natural Communities of Vermont’, using it extensively in my work as a landscape gardener. Planting in groups of native plant communities appropriate for a specific site is paramount in efforts to re-wild and revegetate our much-altered Vermont landscape. Learning and studying nature and natural processes directs me in my work. Much of my work involves educating clients on how to reduce their harmful human meddling in natural processes.

Like Liz, as someone of approximately the same generation, I also experienced how old attitudes and the male-dominated world altered my work trajectory. I also can feel the depressing weight of the world in it’s present state. However, I am constantly amazed at how nature can heal itself with just a little help. It’s been encouraging over the years to experience many examples of nature’s latent resilience and talents to restore itself using some specific and careful methods to help. It’s true that in our small efforts of trying to heal the world, we can also heal ourselves.

Here’s a source for optimism: compare the meager UVM course catalog options from the late 1970s when I was enrolled to diverse and numerous options available today in Agriculture, Landscape and Ecology (ALE). There is a huge surge in interest for linking ecological principles to agriculture and landscape fields, and a huge surge in interest for home gardeners to learn better ecological practices. There is a shift happening!

I am learning so much about plants around me from sites like yours. Thank you!

Hi Jeff,
Here in Wisconsin we use a retort pyrolyses system that burns very clean. We make apple wood, oak, hickory, and cherry charcoal. We start it with left over pallet debris and once it goes into full retort it runs on its own. This was a custom design of our own and we make about 100 lbs of finished charcoal and we keep it in clean pickle buckets to keep it dry due to it absorbing moisture. Then we package it in 10lb lined boxes for shipping. It’s a bunch of fun to make. The cleanest is the pyrolyses system, but it can be dangerous due to it’s made in a pressurized container that is making gas that will feed the heating process and requires good maintenance and a good understanding of the process and system. You first cook off the residue moisture which makes steam then it switches to gas as it reaches 600-650 degrees. You will use about 5lbs of pallet wood to get it started and it burns extremely clean. I use all the scrap that comes of my sawmill that drys for a year.

Love your story. Where I live on a hill we are a stones throw from a barn and cellar hole . We know the history of the family that farmed on our property and the cellar holes do indeed tell their own stories. We learned they sold potash, raised sheep, and the family had six children. We have a photo from 1918 showing the family, the family dog and a Boston fern on a table, all outside in front of the house. Boston ferns were the rage back then and garnered enough prestige to be in the photo. The sons were all Paul Bunyans. Desired then to work the hard life, of a farm back then in Vermont. I found a lilac, and a beautiful pink tiny rose bush I researched.Its name-Dorothy Perkins. I have spent 34 years digging around the cellar holes and oh the treasures I’ve found. Locate the outhouse and go to town digging . That’s where the trash went. The house and barn cellar holes are surrounded by six mature, ancient Black locust trees. One planted, so I’m told for each child born there.

I love this story! I once owned property in Dennysville, Maine that came with an old foundation as this article describes, complete with formerly-beloved lilacs and a “dump pile”. Oh the treasures!!! Beyond all the cool old bottles and broken bits, my favorite find was a 1940s toy truck. It was a beautiful rusty old thing with three of its original tires mostly intact. Whatever child had owned this had attached a certain joyful appreciative spirit to it, which passed through to me when I became the owner.

He was a distant cousin of my late dad, Edward M.Mills !

Thanks, Lucy Gross, for the interesting article. I now live in western Canada, but in my youth when I was roaming the woods of Québec, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, I enjoyed many woodland stretches that I will now think of as seepage forests. In Newfoundland these stretches were often thickly carpeted by mosses.

Thanks for taking me back to those roamings!

Mike Rosen

Thank you for your wonderful information. We really and truly appreciate your knowledge and look into the woods with new eyes every time we learn something new.

I loved seeing this article. My husband and I recently moved from Baltimore city after living there for 50+ years so we could be closer to our place in Vermont. Cities need more people like Brandon Radcliffe, defying assumptions that people of color or people living in cities don’t care about the natural environment.

Wonderful story, Meghan. I love visiting the wildflower table whenever I’m at the museum. Your story can help us all appreciate how important these humble blooms are to our scientific knowledge. Pretty to look at…and so much more!

Fascinating. I’m curious about the role (if any) of sibling groups in the juvenile ravens’ first years. Some mammals form sibling groups after leaving their parents. Perhaps ravens do the same. This of course would make food sharing even more worthwhile, as an individual would have an interest in seeing genetically connected ravens also succeed to breed.

Good advice on axe storage namely Gransfors Bruk.

Thank you for introducing me to winter fireflies.  I had no idea they existed and I’m pleased that they are predators.  I will look for them when I’m out pruning this weekend and take a picture if I find any.

I’ll second Richard Donovan’s kudos for the author’s excellent work.  I’m familiar with the Connecticut Lakes Headwaters Forest from several visits as an FSC forest certification auditor under the two owners that preceded Aurora.  I’ve also hunted there.  I’m glad to see that the state and Aurora have reached an agreement that will balance the landowner’s carbon goals with the region’s wildlife habitat and economic needs.  The harvest level agreement will allow more mature forest stands to develop, while at the same time harvesting will create habitats preferred by young-forest species, generate tax revenue for local communities, and timber for local markets.  I am somewhat skeptical about the net carbon storage claims of carbon credit programs: a tree not cut here is likely to be replaced by another cut elsewhere to meet overall demand for forest products. However, these programs do provide financial benefits for landowners and incentivize forest restoration.

Hi Steve, thank you for raising this point. You are correct that many soil microbes are heterotrophs which respire CO2, and that climate warming can accelerate these rates of respiration. However, microbes are also an integral part of healthy soil ecosystems, which function overall as “sinks” where organic carbon can be stored for some time without being released back into the atmosphere. Temperate forests play a key role in soil carbon storage, particularly because of their colder winter temperatures that inhibit the rapid respiration and turnover that occurs in tropical regions—like you say. However, that doesn’t mean that killing or altering microbial communities will necessarily lead to more carbon storage because they aren’t respiring. This ongoing snowmelt experiment shows that removing the insulation provided by snow cover destabilizes these communities, resulting in changes to nutrient cycles and gas exchange and shifting the kinds of processes that microbes carry out. While respiration and production of CO2 do go down at colder temperatures [caused by soil freezing], in the longer term these changes could potentially drive the release of more potent greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide, reduce nutrient availability for plant growth, and release carbon bound to soil mineral surfaces. The role of microbes in the carbon cycle is extremely complex, and that’s exactly why we need more research to understand what changing winter conditions mean for our forests.

We have a beautiful beaver lodge in the brook which flooded a lot yesterday after torrential rains. Are the beavers ok in their lodge during a flood?

Wow! This will really help me with my science project, thanks!