Site Discussions

I have a question: how do earthworms react against the sunlight inside a box?

hi i am doing a project for school, and i was wondering when exactly the government subsidized the planting of red pines?
thanks,
Sam

any suggestions about root killers such as copper sulfate or rock salt is appreciated for roots in sewer lines—trees are in Havre, Montana

Great article! We live near a power line corridor and see a mix of the pluses and minuses described. Our local company, CVPS, seems to have the same attitude as VELCO—at least on the surface. Nice to know that companies are thinking and doing.

My Dear Mr Anderson,                11/5/2010
  I just read & reread your fine article.  It takes me back to a time in my childhood in the mid 1950’s and early ‘60’s when I was priviliged to see some of the remainings of the old days.  I grew up in a little town in the cumberland mountains called Spencer.  On weekends, me and my younger brother would spend the weekend with two other brothers that lived “down on the creek”.  Their family lived on one of the biggest farms that I can remember.  In fact one of his corn fields was once a town called Billingsley. Although I did not know it at the time. I can only remember playing and running through the fields and woods, until I read you story, and then the memories came flooding back. I now remember there were a few old houses and paths that lead to them and on into the woods.  We discover long forgotten gravyards, and sometime single graves out in the forest. I found all kinds of old machaniery and old iron tools and home made devices.  And now another 60 or so years have passed, I find myself wanted to revisit that place.  I guess your story awoke some strong feeling of wanting to return to yesterday in me. Maybe one day soon I will take a ride in that direction.
  And again, thank you for such a fine and inspiring story.
         
              Sincerely,
              Bill Davis

Hi Shaun—

I’d direct you attention to the hearth.com user forums, especially the ‘boiler room’: http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewforum/21/

There’s lots of good info here about back drafts and achieving optimal gasification. It took me a good solid year of running my gasifier and reading the forum to really get up to speed. Good luck!

“The smoke should not be ‘biting, or rancid, or foul’ , but the sweet smell of properly burned wood”

I have a Alternate Heating Systems Wood Gun brand wood gasification furnace and suffer from just the fowl smelling smoke described above.  Does anyone else experience this problem?  I also get a lot of back-puffing of fresh air through my fresh air intake duct, as if the furnace can’t handle all the fresh air being delivered.  I have to shut off the manual damper to make it stop, which seems like th ewrong thing to do.  This fresh air back puffing also seems to have a little exhaust mixed into it as it does smell up the house when it happens.  What is the chemistry of the exhaust from wood gasification?

Thats an interesting tid bit about using the sap to make birch beer ! I wonder what it was mainly a remedy for.

What a wonderful story! If every timber sale in New England was supervised by a forester like Bob Perschel, our woods would be much more beautiful and valuable.

If Doug Watts thinks that civilization as we know it should cease to exist and he wouldn’t mind waiting a few centuries for New England forests to revert to something like their condition prior to a few millennia of human impact, I have no argument with his point of view. Likewise, if he thinks it’s OK that New England should continue to import more forest products than it produces, thus exploiting the resources and workers of other parts of the country and world, then there may not be much to discuss.

If, however, we want to grow more of our wood locally as many of us want to grow our food locally, we need to manage our forests wisely. That’s not playing God, that’s playing human. We should focus our ire on those who bulldoze forests for shopping malls and suburban housing developments. Those artificial and engineered landscapes will never grow any kind of forest again.

Thanks to Irwin Post for a particularly helpful article. I have a small woodlot in Royalston, MA that has been totally neglected since heavy logging about 30 years ago. While there are some nice red oak and white pine on the property, beech is the predominant tree species along with plenty of striped maple in the understory. As I begin timber stand improvement, it’s pretty clear that I won’t get much oak or pine regeneration with a combination of vigorous beech sprouting and heavy deer browsing. The information in this article will give me at least a fighting chance.

Today in Passumpsic, Vermont I saw a catamount!!! It was about 7.30 am. My dog has been going wild sniffling and growling for days. I took some pics, but they are not too good.

Nice.

Great to see the involvement in conservation of the woodcock. My husband and I run a a hunting preserve , which cover is an old farmfield bordering the river.  The woodcock is plentiful and the hunters that come to preserve enjoy seeing them.  We raise our own pheasant and quail to release, and hunters are pleasantly surprised when seeing woodcock.  They are in pursuit of the pheasant and the viewing of an accasional woodcock is a bonus.  My husband has worked very hard with his small john deere skidder to bring back the abandoned fields.

Hi Doug—

Thanks for your comment—it gets right to the heart of the matter. We intentionally used ‘native invasives’ to create a useful distinction between species like hay-scented fern (the so-called ‘native invasive’), glossy buckthorn (invasive exotic), common lilac (non-invasive exotic) and, say, red oak (native, non-invasive.) Your point that deciding which natives are classified as “invasive” is nothing but personal preference is exactly to the point - it’s a utilitarian argument, as the author points out in the early going: “The real problem with native invasive plants is that they conflict with our human desires.”

Chuck Wooster, associate editor

Thank you Mr Brown for this article, which gave me the basic principals. I was in a hurry to try, so with no bee box, that’s what i did…

I took the half top part of a big soda bottle as a bee box.
I made a cardboard cone for covering the half bottle.
I screwed a plastic plate on top of a broom handle.
I got a small part of a new sponge so my bottle could cover it. (Rinse the sponge carefully)
I made the syrup with bottled water and poured it on my sponge.
I dressed with flashing colors.

How to use this:
-I cover the bee and the flower with the half bottle, and when the bee tries to fly to the sky in my bottle, I just place it on top of the sponge bait in the plastic plate.
-I let her fly inside for a while so that she will run out of fuel (3 to 5 min), then I cover the bottle with the cardboard cone to cut the light.
-i pull up the cone a little bit to see if the bee has landed and is foraging. Once she has done so, I slowly take the bottle away and am done.

As time has changed, I use “Google earth” for bee lining, and I look for many lines going to the hive. (Think of what you do and choose the proper spots to be able to use landmarks visible on Google earth.)

When you have a lot of bees coming, take away your bait and hide it. When flying in search of it, they will run out of fuel and will rush on the bait when you put it back (3 minutes later.) The best is to replace your sponge with another one with almost pure honey because it takes more time for the bees to suck it up. As soon as you have enough bees on your sponge, take the plate (no chock) and move it in the direction you think suitable to get a new direction line. With the bees sucking honey, they won’t move, and you have 3 minutes before they take off. The plate must be at rest on the new spot when they take off. If they fly around for new landmarks before they go to the hive, they will come back. (You may need a few intermediary stops before you reach a suitable spot.) Keep a “bait sponge” in a plastic plate on the ground on the first spot, and on each new spot, so that you can start again if they don’t come back. If you want to continue the day after, the bees will check your spots once in a while, so they will be back not long after you’ve replenished your bait.

Warning: sponges will take on a bad smell for bees after 24 hours, so rinse them with chlorine/water/water/sugar water and finally syrup before you use them again.

PS: If your first bee has been flying around to record landmarks, she should be back soon, and then you should do as Mr Brown says. Be patient for her before you catch other bees, or you might be looking for many hives and it will be a big mess on your computer screen. It’s a fascinating process.To finally locate the hive, use your binoculars slowly and carefully to see bees going and coming.

I saw an old box very similar to the one described in a local museum, labeled “a Queen Cage”. Didn’t look like any queen cage I’ve ever seen before. Thought it might be a bee-lining box. Then found this great article describing the very box. Your plans are almost identical to the museum box. Sounds like fun - will have to make a box and get bee lining with my grandsons - I think they would love it.

Thanks a lot for writing this article. I do agree that marking the bee would help in timing the correct turn-around time and distance thus calculated.

Thanks again,

Henry

I’m a bit confused by the nomenclature here.  What does the term ‘native invasive’ even mean? In plain language it is an oxymoron since the second word is the antonym of the first (“white black” or “up down”).

By the content of the story, it is apparent the author wishes to create and impose a highly specific suite of human-chosen plant species on his property, ie. a garden, and to strictly limit any plants that he does not desire to be there. At the end of the day, it is the landowner/gardener who gets to play God. This renders meaningless the words ‘native’ and ‘invasive’ as they are normally understood by scientists. It would be helpful here if the author would admit he is simply making a highly artificial and engineered landscape that has little connection to nature or to the natural forest of the Northeast.

Native species in New England, plant or animal, already have a tough enough time. The last thing they need is being pilloried as being ‘invasives’ in their own native habitat.

Thanks,

Doug Watts

Hey, we felt that 1995 derecho in Connecticut! The weirdest thing was hearing it coming.

And sometimes it works the other way. We took down a set of 100+ foot-tall white pines growing too close to the house, and we guessed they were 50-55 years old. A ring count of the stumps showed 56 years.

(Of course, we cheated a little—we have photos of the house taken ca. 1950 and there wasn’t a tree to be seen for miles at that time. It was amazing to learn that the entire area, save for farm fields and house sites, has reforested in our lifetime!)