Site Discussions

We’ve noticed most of the phenomena and effects Dave mentioned; also, it seems that many perennials are blooming earlier than normal. The first tell-tale red leaves in the middle of the green canopy, which usually appear mid-August, showed up mid-July. Several bird species arrived early, too. We have the usual range of species but there seem to be fewer individual birds. Conversely, we are seeing species such as titmouse and red-bellied woodpecker expanding their range northward.

There’s been a definite shortage of bats—owing, I presume, to the white-nose disease decimating their population. Early in the season, we noticed fewer bees, but now I’m seeing more of them. Fewer wasps, fewer mosquitoes, fewer black flies, fewer insects altogether.

For the first time, we experienced a slug problem in the garden (in fact, they appear to have taken over the yard!), along with a tomato blight and themes-and-variations of mildews, rusts, funguses, and pest invasions. But the raspberry crop is astounding, for the second year in a row. Wildflowers and perennials have been awesome.

Along with the extraordinary wetness this year, there was a cold, dry start to the growing season. Latest frosts we’ve had in a decade, requiring a second planting in the veggie garden, which in turn might have affected crop development and sensitivity to the various malaises.

There’s been a dearth of activity in our pond, which normally houses fish, shellfish, and associated bugs, and draws kingfishers, herons, wood ducks, and things that prey on all of the above. But aside from an intense “peeper” season, we’ve neither heard nor seen the usual pond-related wildlife. The water has remained high, and summer scummy plant life bloomed very early. Not sure what to make of all that.

We’ve also noticed many more garden and field snakes than ever before.

—Carolyn

We have a pretty big stocked pond on our property and very skinny rainbows and brookies this year.  So we KNOW that hatches are down due to the daily and nightly drenchings.  Nor is the surface of the pond being suddenly broken by natural fly assaulting trout.  But we remain hopeful and the fly rods are by the side door primed for quick action!

I think the reason for the lack of mosquitoes, at least in Lincoln, is due to the fact that we have had rain almost daily which washes out the pools of standing water before the larvae have time to hatch.  It’s just a thought.

Marty

I have read a lot of articles on this plant, but no one seems to know that this plant is known as a ghost plant because it glows in the dark.

Dave—It occurs to me that these successive summers of substantial moisture, paired with relatively mild winters that have featured long-season snow cover, must be about optimal for tree growth. I’m seeing enormous growth of white pine shoots and limbs on a usually dry site near our house. Perhaps these luxuriant seasons are just what the forest requires to bank the reserves needed to withstand the next insect attack or drought or whatever comes down the pipe. Nice thought anyway - helps offset the rotting squash.—Chuck

Hey Vicky,

By this time next year I will have installed a wind turbine to supply electricity to my house, hot tub, barn, and my outside wood boiler. Are you going to have a problem with my wind generator too?

If your neighbor installed one would you be the type that complains about the noise, the way that it might appear, or that a bird might fly into it and lose its life? Or would you be proud of the fact that your neighbor is doing his part to help the environment?

Yes! Bark is indeed wonderful! Of course, the bark of a dead tree is even more interesting than that of a live one, though, then the poor tree itself is gone, alas! Hello, Mr. Amos! Glad to see you are still writing! Bryan Morris still asks for you. Jane

University of Rhode Island has a list of sustainable trees and shrubs. It can be found here: http://www.uri.edu/ce/factsheets/sheets/sustplant.html

LOVE this article! The writer managed to capture the all too real safety issues of chainsawing and make me laugh at the same time. My husband’s wanted a chain saw for years and I won’t let him get one. But now maybe I’ll take the class and get one for myself. Thanks for this terrific, informative piece. Hope to see more from this writer.

Let’s really be clear Brad. Your argument in favor of OWBs is centered around yourself. First of all, wind changes but the excessive smoke and carcinogenic particulates scatter and hover all around neighborhoods, especially on still days and nights, even infiltrating houses that are tightly closed. I would like everyone to know just HOW BAD it REALLY is! Living between one OWB and a few wood stoves put me and some other neighbors into the hospital last year. YOUR savings will be someone else’s medical bill. I don’t inhale auto tail pipe emissions nor do I hang my face over my oil burner chimney, therefore I am not ingesting the excessive amount of poisons that your OWB is delivering to your neighbors’ lungs and also to you while you sit in your hot tub breathing poison. Burning wood is a filthy, self centered habit. 

To Jim: I own my land too. Why should someone else have the right to infect my home with putrid, harmful wood smoke? Where are my rights? Do I have to live with the smoke to please burners so they can save money at another’s expense? Burners should live in isolated regions where there smoke remains THEIR smoke.

Silly Environmentalists, Hares are for Lynx!

Once again, the knee jerk, thoughtless “environmental” (keyword being “mental”) movement saves us from ourselves to the detriment of everything around it.

When are thoughtful, concerned conservationists going to tell these vapid do-gooders to go back to the city and stay there?

i have a very nice modern hardwood mill,in excellent condition, for sale. it is located in fryburg,maine. the mill sits on 16 acres with extensive rail siding. recently,the state has approved this as a pine tree zone. this allows owners to pay no sales or corporate income taxes for five years.also has many financial perks related to pine tree as well. mill itself was constructed in a new building just a few years ago and just shut down in march 2009. the new mill"s cost was over 1.6 million dollars. many other buildings as well as equipment still here. extensive conveyor systems and boiler feed systems in very good shape also. buy before developers do. richard

Visit http://www.burningissues.org for important information, along with http://rawsep.spaces.live.com
http://www.cleanairhudson.com

We’ll be proud of our neighbors when they use clean energy, rather than burning wood that creates black carbon soot.

Tests done by the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM) found that the average fine particle emissions (a particularly harmful pollutant) from one OWB are equivalent to the emissions from 22 EPA certified wood stoves, 205 oil furnaces, or as
many as 8,000 natural gas furnaces. One OWB can emit as much fine particle matter as four heavy duty diesel trucks on a grams per hour basis. The smallest OWB has the potential to emit almost one and one-half tons of particulate matter every year.  Wood smoke travels far into the atmosphere where the fine particles pollute clouds and cause global warming—and YES Mark - there IS such a thing as global warming.

Huntington NY just BANNED OWBs because of excessive carcinogenic smoke. An OWB distributor from Catskill NY agreed, these devices have no place on less than 5 acres. I would think Councilmembers and OWB suppliers have more knowledge than you people do. I for one do not and WILL not breathe anyone’s wood smoke. 

We’re working on drafting and revising wood burning laws. Don’t waste your money on these OWBs people. They’ll eventually be banned or very strictly regulated. Put on a sweatshirt until cleaner heating alternatives are available.

To Jim: I own my land too. Why should someone else have the right to infect my home with harmful wood smoke? Where are my rights? Do I have to live with the smoke to please burners so they can save money at another’s expense?

The Snowshoe hare is the food base for this cat. They become tame, desperate the first season of a cyclic crash. This is usually when they are photographed in such places as Alaska. I have seen tracks, of pumas and lynx, in ME. and NH. respectivly, it’s always a uplift in spirit to spot these tracks.

                        Thanks!

Make sure the oiler is working and chain is not too dull.
Wes

My yard borders a small natural woodland. I’ve been busy pulling out mustard garlic and would like to identify some of the beautiful native flowers that populate the area.

The birch leaf miner article was forwarded to me by a colleague to whom I had complained about the disappearance of birches during my youth in northern Westchester County (NY). I was delighted to learn from Todd McLeish’s Spring 2009 article that the miner was in check.  When I moved to NJ in 1981, my two gray birches were lightly infested. I bud-sprayed one but not the other. The unsprayed tree died by 1985. But in the mid-1950s, the birch leaf miner (or some birch leaf miner) arrived in northern Westchester County with a vengeance. In the former (pre-WWI) agricultural lands dominated in the 1950s by 10-40 year old gray birches, the miners caused almost complete defoliation by about the third year (1955 give or take a year), and by the end of the decade, ALL of the gray birches in our yard (at least a dozen trees of varying ages) had succumbed. As indicated in the article, they did leaf out in the summer after the first defoliation. But they didn’t tolerate the stress of repeated defoliations, year after year. The insect-control people we called did not find evidence of borers, but the miner larvae were evident upon close examination of the leaves—often several in a leaf, causing the entire foliage to turn brown and then drop. Nearby black birch and yellow birch were not affected. So I disagree with the statement that it “is not a fatal pest”. I realize that there have been other miners in North America, but at least some miner was fatal to gray birches in northern Westchester County, New York, in the mid-1950s.

I would like to clear a few things up. I have actually installed a OWB in 1999, I have invested $7500.00 in the system. This includes a 16 by 32 wood storage barn, all the components to heat my water, house, a 40 by 40 pole barn, and my hot tub that I sit in and watch my OWB at work. I am not sure where most of you are buying your wood at 200-300 a cord, I have never spent more than 60 a cord. I buy my wood by the pulp cord, that is by a log truck @ $625.00 a load which gets me 23 face cord. So the point is that some of you trying to point out how expensive it is to install and operate a unit need to take another look. I spent about $925.00 this winter in Northern Michigan to heat all items mentioned, before this OWB it would have cost me about $4000.00. Every time that great big pig on wheels comes to my house to bring me that really clean “propane” it would cost me 900-1200 each time at 3-4 times a year. The best part is that I have the ability to install all of this myself, it was one of the greatest things I ever did, and it is really paying dividends now. My second point is that if you think that because some guy delivers your heat by truck you are some how helping the are we breathe you need to re think that. I do understand how it might be frustrating for some of you living next door to one on some days, but lets get real, the wind direction is continually changing, so I no it isn’t as bad as you would like everyone to believe. You really should be proud of your neighbor’s if you truly care about the planet. I really doubt that for most of you your issues with your neighbors have anything to do with there OWB.

I enjoy this intensely creative, insightful kind of eco-detective work. I worked at Hubbard Brook before Charlie and met some of the Wilder Thorton old-timers who remembered the forest on Mt. Cushman well including the spruce taken out to build bunkhouses for American soliders in France in WWI. I also saw evidence of shifts in yellow birch, maple and beech that were going on and still going on “North of Crawford” Notch. Re-read Thoreau’s The Maine Woods, and you catch little glimpses of shifts. I, too, am fascinated by the make up of the forest that came in on the heels of the Wisconsinan ice sheet as it ablated just north of the White Mountains; what the dominant species were, where they came from originally? The beech question also fascinates me. In college I did a lot of research on beech and larch in Northern NH as to their etiologies but could never really conclude anything.