Site Discussions

As always, an excellent article, Thor! Will look forward to reading your latest book when it is published!

Best wishes,
Luella Landis
Cromwell

This is my great great grandfathers logs….

Hi Steve - I enjoyed reviewing this very nice article you wrote about a very nice piece of Vermont that you give attention to!
Be sure to keep sharing your history and current and future endeavors with the lucky State Foresters who get to meet you. Best, Chris Olson

What a wonderful website, sent to me by Myles Sornborger and Autumn Hein. I am a retired biology teacher and researcher of Diamondback Terrapins in Rhode Island. At age 88, I will continue to read your postings!

Nice to see you are doing well and still working to improve how humans interact with the earth.

Bill

I love this post, and would appreciate more as a series. Thanks for putting it together!

Very good interview/article on Rick.  I have been on a number of his mushroom forays and he his very enthusiastic and extremely knowledgeable as well as fun.  He presents in a way that includes everyone and you can tell he wants to help everyone learn and in doing so is great about encouraging questions. What’s nice too, is he shows and tells the relationships of the various plant and animal kingdoms. One of the most knowledgeable and positive outdoors people I’ve met.

Jesse, thanks for this wonderful story. In recent years I also have been looking for the objects hidden in odd pieces of wood. There might be a spoon in a large dying stem of Lilac, a bowl in the base of a dead Cherry or even something in a piece of firewood which just seems to have extra pretty grain. Any wood with some moisture still in it whether recently living or not works better than dry wood. At least until it is time for sanding. Wish I had discovered how much I enjoy it when I was younger but it makes for a great retirement hobby now.

We have 90 plus acres of field and woods in Bradford, NY. It’s on the top and side of a hill. We have a motorcycle race there. In the woods are about 30 round stone mounds, some are over 30 feet across. Some are long with large boulders at the end. Long stone pile walls about 30 feet across and a “Y” shaped wall 300-400 feet long built in a dugout ditch going downhill. Some spaced stone pile walls with connecting stones between them. We are still finding more features. Lots of huge stones in the walls. The first settlers here came in 1830 and they took apart the end of the longest wall to make their home foundation, which is still there. We have found a Lamoka beveled adze in the woods and a perfect flint point on the track. Some other odd features are there too. It looks like a lot went on there at one time. Judging by the bottle dumps there from 1840-1940, they were taking lots of medicine! We don’t know who did all this but we’re pretty sure we know who didn’t.

Art,

You were like a father figure to me the 7 months I shared with you and Trish. Art has since passed, but I hope Teddy is still kicking it. I have met the love of my life in Boston and I want to have what you and Trish had. We dream of moving to Maine and starting a homestead. We’ll probably stay in the city another year, but the woods are calling me back every day.

I took what you and Trish taught me and I’ve been working at different landscape companies in the Boston area doing plant installation, pruning, mulching etc.. Ive been taking care of perennials, shrubs, ground cover, and trees in some of the wealthiest areas I have ever seen. The residential landscaping life is wearing on me, but thankfully all the companies I have been at have taught me a lot and havent made me mow or weed wack ever since we dont care too much about the lawns, moreso the woody plants. I’m also ironically working at Fenway park part time as part of the Grounds Crew taking care of dang monocrop kentucky blue grass from New Jersey. While I dont love the grass, I am beginning to put up with it. We need green grass for a college football game we’ve been preparing for which is held in late December. Climate Change has made growing green grass in the middle of winter somewhat possible (with the help of hand watering, grow lights and tarping during bad weather). As the fall cleanups are ending at my gardening job where I’m a reluctant crew lead, I am realizing I need something more stable than seasonal work for me and my girlfriend as rent in Boston is absurd. I am setting my sites on becoming a mail carrier for the USPS for stability while living in Boston another year or so. This way I’ll have energy after work to care for my plants, animals and family.

If anyone reads this just know I owe much of my professional and personal confidence to the strongest, most candid and good-valued couple I have ever met. The Krueger-Norton legacy will live on in so many positive and unpredictable ways. Despite the crazy, seemingly deteriorating world we are in, people like Art and Trish give me the hope and motivation that even the smallest good deed can lead to more and more good.

Rest in Peace Art. To Trish, sorry I havent called since leaving the farm a few years back. I know his loss has been hard but I hope you are able to find happiness without his physical presence. He is still with us in spirit and I think about you guys all the time.

Much love,
Matt Salvage

For a few years I have been looking for any research on the toxicity of Canada Yew vs other species. I cannot seem to find much in the literature. Something I have noticed is that the literature describes other Yew species being highly toxic to cattle and horses yet one of the big reseasons for the decline of Canada Yew is herbivory by White-tailed Deer. Does this mean that deer are resistant to the toxins, or does it imply that the Canada Yew is less toxic than the non-native yews often planted ornamentally?
If anyone has any insights, please share!

Reading your essay in November 2023 leaves me happily sifting through the hope for another snowy “New England winter”  over the next few months.And I hold to my hope, even if I’ll have to say in March, “Maybe next year, as the Red Sox begin another, different kind of, season. Thanks for the good read.

Thanks for a great article. “ Stick season”- (I’ll have to use that!)
Makes me want to venture out and do my own “research” at a nearby pond. Great photos!

I absolutely loved this article. A deep dive on a small place, with something I’ve noticed but never really appreciated or understood. So interesting.

If you are using glyphosate, which is a toxic poison, I would hardly be concerned about disturbing the soil by pulling up plants.  After all, it is just “weeding”, which loosens the soil and makes room for other plants.

I recently lived on rural land with a lot of invasives.  We fought off many but the buckthorn was pretty hopeless - the next neighbor had an enormous hedge of tall buckthorn running along his wooded lot, producing many thousands of seeds every year.  We just tried to keep those on our property from getting big enough to flower. But I did learn that the two invasive species hybridize so it’s difficult to tell which you have.  Not that it matters; they’re both awful.

One of the problems we found with pulling plants larger than 1/2” or so is that doing so creates a nearly perfect seed bed and seeds are often already present even for a small tree. We have had excellent results from cutting the stems, leaving them about 4” high, and wrapping a layer of very heavy black plastic over them and fixing it in place with either a wire or plastic tie wrap. Within two years 90%+ were dead. A group in MN markets plastic wrap for this purpose called Buckthorn Baggies. Regardless, you are absolutely right that eradication doesn’t happen in a year! Also, I’ve read the berries, while favored by birds, also cause them to poop, thus helping spread the trees.

Many of my S. NE witch hazel leaves were folded and silk-stitched by some insect in late summer. Anyone know what does that?

Ethan,

Interesting reading your entry as I’ve often felt I should “help” my forest. I suggest reading The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. It has changed my approach to everything I do in my forest.

Tom Ward

Thank you! Encouraging!