Site Discussions

One of the many things I love about Northern Woodlands is that it includes art as part of its consciousness about the environment and associated lifestyles. The painting referenced in this blog beautifully captures the whole.

As the impact on roads increases with increased weight on an axle a single 40 ton truck can create the equivalent wear and tear as 9,600 cars. Personally I would prefer that damage to go to the Interstate as it gets better maintenance.

Great story.  I have never really considered how insects survive—I just figured short life spans—laying eggs which hatch in the spring.  Thanks for your article!

A trip through the digestive tract of a bird greatly increases the chance that a juniper seed will germinate. Although the seeds retain their viability for several years, the germination rate of seeds that have not been excreted by an animal is typically very low.

I worked in the pulp and paper industry for my entire working career. I watched chip trailers break while unloading on the chip dumps and saw the lack of good maintenance on the log trucks. I for one always had concerns and feel that rather than increase the load limit on interstate highways the limit should be at 80,000 pounds gross weight. It is well known that it takes longer to stop, the heavier the vehicle is. I don’t believe the brakes are maintained any better than the trailer. If anything we should be pushing for lower weight limits since we are not maintaining our highway infrastructure, we should at least extend the life of what we have.

Thanks for this interesting article! A refreshing take on the season.

Good that the trucks can get around better . . . but all I can think of is the poor souls in any vehicle trying to get across central Vermont to New York (and vice versa) who lost the Champlain Bridge. Now their routes are several hours longer!

How does efficiency of use of biomass in producing biochar compare with that for producing heat?  When one produces biochar, less heat is obtained than by burning, but then the biochar has important value as a soil additive and a means of sequestering carbon.  How does its value as such compare with that as a heat source?

Richard is a very warm and gentle soul, and this has been his love for many many years!  I respect and love him.

Dane

I know truckers won’t like to hear it, but there IS a practical limit on what highways can tolerate weight-wise. Every time a new housing development goes in here in the country, the concrete and block-delivery trucks annihilate the pavement and we run on wall to wall potholes for a couple years until the state gets around to repaving the roads. The irony in your neck of the woods was allowing them to run on the little roads, but not the big ones. Safety alone should have dictated otherwise.

Don’t forget Winterberry, Ilex verticillata, in our wetlands, too. Brilliant red berries if the migrating robins (and fawns, arggh) leave them alone!

Nice essay. Really captures the feeling of that first snow, especially when it comes late.

Reminds me of one of my favorite snowfall moments: The only times in my life when I experienced true and total silence were during soft snowfalls in a calm.

That Dave Mance who writes forest management plans is my dad. I’ll be sure to forward this to him, Mike. He’ll no doubt enjoy the trip down memory lane, even as he’s disappointed by the notion of veneer firewood.

Small world…

Totally unrelated to the article, other than there was crusty snow in Hardenburgh yesterday, I walked a property owned by the Zen Study Society that Dave Mance wrote a management plan for. It was a well written plan. Unfortunately, over the past twenty years, they allowed loggers to high grade their forest for their annual 100 cord fuel wood allotment. I’m afraid it was pretty expensive firewood. It is a good site to grow timber; but work will be needed to control beech suckers and it needs decades to recover from this cutting.

I thought you might like to hear a reminder of days past.

When first married, we ate lots of porcupine pot roasts. After a few helpings, one remembers how the den trees smell which cuts the appetite. Too many porcupines in an area can have a significant impact on hemlock and hard maple timber. During one week in the early 1970’s, I shot 53 out of rage over their damage. Jae, the dog featured in the article by Doug Allen, Autumn of 2007, only encountered one porcupine. She even let me pull quills from in her mouth without trying to bite me.

I moved after living in 1 location 23 years due to outdoor stove no neighbors had a stove in new location for 4 years now there is no clean air to breath even inside my house. Can’t wait for the outlaw of these smoldering pieces of junk. Need representatives to pass laws.

Well said!

We don’t have porcupines this far south; down here, our sympathies for poor dumb creatures go to the ‘possum. I think there’s something in most people’s psyche that makes them root for tough little under-dogs of any species. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed your article so much.

To me nothing in the world of weather can compare to a pre-holiday snowfall, as captured so well here by Dave.  Thanks for whitening my day!

All people who have the property and ability to pay for and operate a wood stove or OWB (requires money and labor no matter what your circumstance), in compliance with the local and state regulations, have a moral and patriotic obligation to do so.

My OWB prevents us from burning about 1,100 gals of No. 2 fuel oil a year. This is enough oil to send a loaded tractor trailer from coast to coast and back again. The oil I save can be used by someone who doesn’t have the same circumstances. The hardwood I burn is a local resource and supplied by local labor and hard working people to whom I pay a good wage. No Arab shieq or South American dictator is required!!

America must get a lot smarter and use our ingenuity to break the back of terrorist nations and move ourselves to energy independence(much) sooner than later.

Until hydrogen fuel cells are perfected, there are few options.  Wood stoves and OWBs for winter heating are a great option.  Wood burning may not be the best solution if you want to count particulate matter but it works, its a plentiful local resource and it’s safe when done responsibly.

No more wars over foreign oil.  Think energy independence and self-reliance.