Site Discussions

This article pops up in the top 10 in a Google search for “vermont current use” so I’m going to post my gripe here. Hopefully it may help others to avoid the issues we are facing. We have 50 acres in current use and are far from “land barons”, I think it is a great program to keep development from taking over as it has in other states.

The Tax department which runs current use has an insidious new form to be filed by anyone in current use who wants to take a bank loan. It is called the subordination form - this allows the bank first dibs over the current use program in liens against the property. As part of the paperwork process (which will hold up your loan for over a month) there is a “routine” check to “update documentation”. They compare your current use land map to an updated aerial photo with an overlay of the latest grand list boundaries. If the hand drawn sketch from 20 years ago on your old plan happens to look a little different from the online database, get ready to bend over!

In our case the 2 acres excluded from current use for our house on our old plan did not match what the computer screen showed, so we will be paying to add a new exclusion area, plus paying a forester to redo the plan, plus paying taxes on the old exclusion area until we can get it re-enrolled, all because of what boils down to a clerical error!

Now Northern Woodlands is not our forester, but I can only imagine the filing cabinets full of old incorrect maps just waiting to generate revenue for the Tax department and the map makers as people try to get mortgages or take new loans.

It’s these type of shenanigans in government bureaucracy that really stick it to the little guy. If I was one of those wealthy out of state landowners I’d get my land out of current use as fast as I could and put up condos instead.

We’d love to see the picture.

My neighbor had a catamount in his yard about two weeks ago.  He has a picture of same.  I saw the picture and it definitely was a tawny colored, large cat, with long tail.  How exciting!

In-laws were visiting and staying at a local hotel. Saw some autumn olives on the roadside and went out to gather with a plastic cup and a plastic bag.  Nabbed about six pounds in 45 minutes. (Slow, I know, but it was a long week and I was feeling sluggish.) Going to try juicing or leathering them. We’ll let you know how it turns out. 

These also grow on other trees, not just birch.

I am one of a team of volunteers who has started a live count the different species of moths (macros and micros) here as part of the national scheme. Please could you send the details of the effectiveness of different types of light sources and optimum wavelength, so that we can optimize our efforts. Currently the team leader has a mercury vapour lamp to shine on a white sheet.

It has been a banner year for the praying mantis in the fields around our house in Monkton, Vermont. Within 15 minutes of looking for them this past weekend, to share the spectacle with friends, we found 8 individuals. Two were light brown in color and the remainder were green.  The brown individuals were feisty, moving arms and legs and head rapidly and hopping around from arm to hand to ground and were 1/2 inch to 1 inch larger than the green ones we found.

Earlier this summer the brown mantis’ I saw were smaller (1 to 1-1/2 inches) than the green ones I saw, at the same time, so I thought they might be juveniles that would turn green with age.  Now all the brown we see (about 1 brown to every 5 green) are 2 to 3 inches long, and one nearly 4-1/2 inches.

In the last 3 weeks, my husband and I have both seen (on separate occasions) a very large (3 1/2 - 4 inches) praying mantis that is completely BLACK!  We refer to it as the “Ninja Mantis”. Now we make sure we have a camera with us whenever were out so we can get a photo document of this unusual specimen.  I have been searching on line for more information on the mantis, but it has been difficult to find any scientific information referring to a black mantis. Is it possible that we saw a mantis after shedding its “skin”? One of the stories I’ve read online said that they are black for a short time before they recover their green skin….

Now, when I mow the walking paths around our fallow fields I see (guesstimate) 20 or 30 individuals, running toward the tall grass to escape the mower. I wonder if they feel the vibration of the mower and sense danger or if they actually hear me shouting “Hey, clear the path!” and have learned that I will stop to give them a chance to reach safety. Honestly, I don’t mind that it takes 10 times as long to mow the paths, it’s amazing to see so many of these little creatures! 

If you know of any reputable web sites or individuals I can contact to find out more about the praying mantis in Vermont please share the info here.  Thank you!

Nice article, thank you.  Would you be willing to comment on using stumps for growing shiitake?  What time of year is best for felling trees and how long after for inoculation, how much stump should be left, inoculate from the top or from the sides through the bark .... ?

Wonderful, Michael. I’ll look forward to the pictures.

I was a young 20 year old when I was first invited to hunt with a group of older men. Now these older gents were very serious about hunting and how they went about it now they would not allow just anybody hunt with them from their camp. I felt very honored for that. After a long hard day of hunting it was so much fun sitting around talking and listening to their stories! Since then they have all past on.

The question I have is how would I find the person to contact about leasing a small chunk of Paper Company land to lease?

If I’m lucky I might have 20 years left to hunt and that time my goal is to try to start a little hunting club to be carried on.

This is an interesting topic. If you wanted to cover this hill and know the degree of slope, is there a conversion formula to convert from footprint (2 dimensional) to the actual surface area to be covered?

I too love dragonflies. I love watching them and it gladdens me when they chose me as a resting spot to eat their meal and I can see them up, close and personal.

I appreciate the information presented in Todd’s article though it concerns me about netting dragonflies. Their wings, though yes quite strong, are also fragile and I don’t agree that it is “safe” to net them - at least for the dragonfly. When I used to teach field ecology I would instruct the students not to catch insects in flight. A damaged wing is likely to mean death for the insect. Yes, we all meet our end sooner or later but we don’t need to “help” these beautiful creatures along the path to death by netting them and possibly damaging their ability to fly.

I have been a licensed forester for 20 years this month. Before that, I was a forest technician and worked on family Xmas tree farm (sold up to 10000 trees a year. Before that, I did TSI and thinned and pruned many, many plantations. I will send you some pictures of one plantation not far from here that my father (retired state forester) had planted in the 60s. I had thinned it and pruned it 30+ years ago. Pruned red pine again 20 years ago. The plantations have had one commercial thinning now.  Red pine were thinned and sold for saw timber (row thinning)in the 90s; the remaining 70% are going to be partially used for the pole market (the ones that make the grade).  The white spruce were thinned for the sawlog/pulp market.  Will send some pictures next time I am around there; probably next week late. Beautiful plantations; there are many around northern Maine; farmers planted trees when fields were no longer used or they quit farming.

The only time we get up close and personal with dragonflies is when they get caught in our bird netting. By this I mean the fine plastic mesh, designed for tossing over berry bushes to discourage birds from raiding, that I have hung over our large windows to stop bird impacts against the glass. (It works surprisingly well.) Inevitably, one or more dragonflies gets caught behind one of these loosely hung nets and we have to flap it open to rescue the thing. They are indeed beautiful and intriguing, and we get a good feeling when we help it back out into the wild.

Hi Edith,

The other berries were southern and northern arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum, V. recognitum, respectively), winterberry (Ilex verticillata), northern bayberry (Myrica pennsylvanica), black, purple, and red chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa, A. prunifolia, A. arbutifolia, respectively), American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), and American elderberry (Sambucus canadensis).

To find out more you’ll have to track down the original paper, which I don’t have at hand.

Besides Arrowwood Viburnum, what were the other 11 berries studied?  Have McWilliams and Seeram published the list with the percentage of antioxidants for the berries of each species?

Where does glyphosate actually come from? What is its breakup of elements down to its natural form (as a derivative of oil or an extract of a plant etc.)?

I grew up on Gardiner - on the east slope of the ridge - and I agree that this place is changing rapidly as fire has been mostly eliminated from its previously significant role.  The berries have been over-crowded by oak, mountain laurel, sassafras, and red maple.  Many of the escarpment areas of the Catskills share a similar history and forest succession as well.  After WWII, the USDA and NYS DEC literally declared war on fire, and the rest has been history.  However, the locals don’t call it the gunks Dave.  The climbers from the city do.

I had one get into my croquet shoes and bite me, it took a small chunk of flesh, about the size of the tip of a pencil lead. It bit me in my middle toe, it felt like I had been stung by a hornet or wasp. Within the first half hour my toe was double the size and red, within the hour my foot was 1.25 the normal size and feeling very swollen. I took a antihistamine and the following day the swelling started to go down

Fascinating, it’s always great to hear how generations have made their way on the land, for good or ill. Blueberries would seem to be for the good.

Erik