Site Discussions

I will try to express to you a heartfelt experience with a fox in my backyard.
On a beautiful sunlit day in late spring, I saw a beautiful, healthy looking red fox on the back slope of our property.  I ran to the bedroom window, sat on the edge of the bed and had the privilege to watch him in the tall grass for an hour. 
He was very close to the house at this point and he was walking very carefully through the grass from left to right, pausing every now and then and tipping his head forward with ears erect.  Finally, he leapt forward right up in the air and pounced on the ground!  It looked very much like our family cat pouncing on a toy.  The difference was that it came up with a rodent in its mouth and procedeeded to dine there in the sun.  Afterwards, I saw it retrieve three more meals at various locations. 
Finally, he curled up on the slope in the sun and groomed itself right in front of me, unaware that I was spying.  I was amazed to see that he washed his face with his paws just like my cat!  He laid there curled up with his nose in his tail and rested for a while and then moved on.  I have to tell you that I felt so privileged to have witnessed that wonderful moment in his life.  It brought me to tears with a sense of warmth I have no words to explain.

Nicely done. Merry Christmas!

I hate to be a killjoy here, because I understand the economic and environmental pluses of heating with wood. However, what people don’t seem to talk about is how painful it is—financially painful, to convert a whole-house heating system from oil to wood, and physically painful to process, haul, and stack it (referring here to firewood logs, not bagged pellets). Then, of course, there’s the mess it makes in the yard and house and clothing, doubling the labor. Once you’ve acquired injuries—from whatever occasion—that make key body parts lame, and/or once you’ve achieved senior citizen vintage, the cost of heating with wood takes on a new burden. Particularly if you don’t have children or local kids needing allowance money to stack it for you. Then there’s the hazard factor loggers have to deal with to get those trees down and processed and delivered. As well, if you happen to have a lean income or a temporary setback, there are subsidy programs available to help buy heating oil or propane but none I’m aware of in our state for wood, and you can purchase oil/gas with a credit card if need be but for local firewood it’s usually cash-on-delivery. Getting it stacked early enough in the season to be dry for winter is also a challenge if you have to spread out deliveries and payments across the warm-weather season, and can’t overbuy each year to stockpile. So yeah, wood is great, but not in all situations. I miss the simple button-pushing days of oil heat!

I’ve heard of the spring leaves of red and sugar maples being eaten, and the report was they weren’t unpleasant but weren’t good either. My guess would be that a mature moose maple leaf would be very leathery and unpleasant, but if you try it and learn differently let us know.

I think the first, Amy. Elm does prefer moist soil and is susceptible to drought, but dutch elm disease is the primary stressor of trees over a certain size. They’re all, unfortunately, living on borrowed time. The beetles that spread the disease need fissures in the trees’ bark to lay their eggs, so they spare the young trees. But most mature trees will be infected by the disease and it will eventually kill them. If anything, the drought may have just accelerated this process a bit.

I saw an animal 3 years ago at night, but could not see it’s body until I walked closer. The first feature I noticed were it’s bright yellow green eyes. The creature was standing in the dark beneath a towering pine. The nearest street light to the creature was about 75 yard’s from the eyes. Can I assume, based on it’s bright yellow green eyes, that the creature had good night vision?

Are Moose maple leaves edible? The reason I ask is that I was wondering what kind of native leaves we could use to make plates: https://www.facebook.com/dw.globalideas/?pnref=story. I teach Issues in Sustainability at Plymouth State University.

A question arose as I was burning a chunk of dead elm last night -15 elm made a great banker for the overnite!
Last summer during the drought I noticed a lot of elm trees wilting and dying, was it the extra stress of fighting disease or is elm just more susceptible to drought?

Please remember that the accidental ingestion of slugs is required for the acquisition of brain worm. This parasite is decimating our moose population in much of New England.

Great article.  Using “local heat” is as important as local food but gets much less press!  The good news is there are also good incentives from Efficiency VT and the Clean Energy Development Fund to install modern pellet boilers and Efficiency VT has just reinstitued a $1,500 incentive for new wood or pellet stoves.  There’s no better time to move to wood heat!

Thank you for your write up about sensual snails! From it stemmed the ideas of placing snails on fungal feet and putting copper pennies around gardens to protect the snails from roundup and other promoters of the use of words against creatures.

Is a land owner in this program allowed to lease land for hunting?

I don’t have first-hand experience coppicing beech specifically for firewood, Michael, but in my forestry endeavors over the years I’ve noticed that beech is a prolific stump sprouter. The wood is also high-quality BTU wise. This leads me to believe it would be an excellent species to coppice.

Is Beech a good species to coppice?  How fast is the regrowth to get more firewood? I have quite a bit of Beech on our property.

So beautiful!

I don’t have any hard data on chunk wood at hand, Marion. And it’s hard to quantify because there are so many variables. A modern, high-efficiency woodstove burns more cleanly than an older model. But how dry your wood is also has a big effect. The other thing to take into account is where the fuel comes from. If you’re cutting trees in the backyard, splitting them, and burning them, there’s that much less of a carbon footprint than if you buy your wood.

If it’s a choice of one or the other, i’d pick whichever you’re more comfortable burning and then maximize the quality of your fuel, thus minimizing your GHG emissions. With pellets, this means buy the most efficient unit you can afford and buy premium pellets—if they’re regionally produced, even better. If it means chunk wood, buy or cut quality wood, dry it properly (age it, split, for at least a year in full sun with good air flow), and then burn it hot. If you can afford a new, high-efficiency stove, get one. (Some states have trade-in programs.) If not, just proceed with dry wood and hot fires. In the big picture, any type of wood burning is better than fossil fuel burning, so whichever route you take, you’re already heading in the right direction.

Linda, sorry to hear about your fish! I can’t be sure from your description, but my first guess is that your visitor was a mink. However, yes, long-tailed and short-tailed weasels can swim, although they’re not really known for it. All of these are members of the mustelidae (Lat. weasel) family, not closely related to rodents.

If only the politicians could think so sensibly.

The first mailed subscribed copy was wonderful. I agree with letter to keep stands of any new plants Black gum, spice bush, bitternut hickory, florida dogwood that are started by blue Jay Stork birds need to be protected and protected from nibbling rabbits and deer. They provide needed food for the new turkeys on the block(forest/field).

As a former teacher and wood burner, cutter and splitter for almost 40 years your opening comments brought to mind the wood harvesting poetry of David Budbill who recently passed away. Reading his work warms you once again.