Site Discussions

To Vermont Wood Pellet,
It sounds like you have a superior product. Can you tell me what firm built your pellet mill.

Susan, You are welcome to use this.  Allison

For a small tree, cut the back cut first, drive in a wedge lightly, and then cut the under cut.  Finish felling the tree with wedges.

The year 0f 2007-08 we spent about $3000 heating our home and water. We bought an E Classic in Aug 2008. We cut our own wood at a cost of about $200 to $300. Granted it does generate some smoke, but so did our old fuel oil furnace. We have only two neighbors, both about 100 yards from our boiler—one NE and one NW (upwind most of the time). And guess what they heat with—wood. My next nearest neighbor is a mile away.

I spent $10000 by the time I had it completely installed, which I did myself.Financially, it is a no brainer. I will admit I burn some green wood mixed with seasoned wood, but the coals from the green wood generate an incredible amount of heat just by themselves.

I really don’t understand all these so called environmentalists. Wind turbines generate no smoke and as far as I can tell, are not a hazzard to anyones health, but they are opposed to them too.

I guess the solution is to drill more oil in the ocean. Or import it from Iraq. Thats a plan!

I have a stewardship tree farm in northern PA and would like to know more about ship mast locust and its availability.

I agree with the main points of this article and would like to add that taking down birdfeeders when snow is not on the ground also keeps bears away from homes. Bears used to eating near us become problem bears.

If the pro biomass people who claim to be so concerned about enhancing the interests of the owners of the forests spent that much energy into selling the high value timber to the people with all the money- that is the East Asian and OPEC nations- the forest owners and their forests would be far better off. If every biomass plant on the drawing boards was built- the value to forest owners would be trivial compared to a return of high stumpage prices as we saw just a few years ago.

All truly pro forestry organizations should band together and send a large number of salesmen to those nations- while our national government should let nations who don’t trade fairly with us that we will now insist that they balance their trade- and they can begin by buying our premium timber.

Joe Zorzin
Mass. Lic. Forester #261

As with any energy issue, there is no simple answer. For example, in Western Massachusetts there are several proposed biomass energy plants. Apart from the carbon issue, one should consider the impact of the plant on river water used to cool the turbines. Also, there is a debate about whether there is enough wood available to supply the plants in a sustainable manner, which leads to the question of how much and which State lands should be harvested (Quabbin watershed, for example).
I certainly don’t have answers, but it is simplistic to just look at the carbon issue. And every region has its own set of issues. Power plants not located on a river don’t raise water quality issues but may well raise other concerns.

Dave, I’d be most interested in looking at biomass harvesting from the woodlot owner’s perspective; does the existence of biomass markets change revenue per acre; the ability to make economic thinning/improvement cuts, etc.  Also how biomass demand relates to pulp demand; what the experience has been around existing bioenergy plants in the northern states, provinces and northern Europe; where in the Northeast plants could be most advantageously sited; what cultivation practices may develop and what effects biomass cultivation and harvest might have on soil composition and run-off, wildlife populations and the appearance of cultivated acreage.  In any case, I look forward to the coverage.

I agree that wood is a “renewable resource” and that perhaps in the long run the CO-2 from the wood burned is recaptured in new growth, but in the short run, it is not.  We will burn more than can replenish and the equation will fall apart.  Consider David Brynn’s comment, repeated in Bill McKibben’s book Eaarth—Our (Vermont’s) forests produce just under 4 cords of wood per person in the state every year in terms of new growth”, (and about half of that is already being harvested.)  “We are not awash in wood.”

Wood pellet industry is a new and better industry.
Everyone should be for it.

This is an update to a post made in 2009. After 10 years of living downwind of a boiler, our neighbors on the other side of our property installed one just before the state made them illegal-a regulation loophole was left open so dealers could clear their inventory.

The net result of this is that at the age of 59, having no other health problems, I have developed “pulmonary reactive disease”, commonly known as asthma. My doctor and the pulmonary specialist who tested me have advised me to avoid the smoke at all costs, including sleeping in the tv room, to stay in the house with windows shut when the smoke is detectable (living between 2 boilers 600 feet apart that means every burning day short of gale force winds), to use an inhaler if I need to be outside for more than a few minutes.

Wood boiler owners trivialize the problems they cause because , well, it’s “not their problem”, and because like most other people, putting money in their own pocket justifies
any negative effect their actions might have on other citizens.

The problems caused by Enron, Wall Street,BP,for example, all seem justified at the time because money was being made, or saved, by ignoring possible consequences down the road.The wood boiler industry was just using the standard business model to succeed, and pass that credo on to the boiler owners.

In other words, Greed is still “good” in the eyes of those who profit from it, and bad for us “small people” who might suffer from it. No amount of regulating, philosophizing, science teaching,or preaching is going to change the mind of anyone putting “free money” in their pocket.

All of us, we and our neighbors, feel like our civil rights and personal freedoms are being abused. I want my health and freedom to use my property at will, they want the freedom to save money on heat with an outdoor boiler. Both can’t co-exist. These are the facts.

Is anyone systematically studying moth populations that are/were the mainstay of the afflicted bat’s diet?  Just casually I have noticed an increase in the chunkier moths that I presume would be primary bat food.  As sad as it is population disasters are ideal opportunities to do predator/prey relationship studies.  Wishing the best for the bats.  Tom Prunier

This is a good topic for discussion, as I am also working with this topic (Stand Structure)on the regeneration of Oak forests in Garhwal Himalaya. There must be some other parameter for estimating the stand structure, as stand composition and their regenerating behavior in a forest .

There is an expanding area in the town of Livingston, Columbia County, NY along the Hudson River where white pine mortality has been spreading for the past ten years. Old and young trees are affected. There are two species of bark beetles and root rot present, but they are normally aided by other stresses. To date, I have not found anyone who can determine the causal factor.

I think this is so sad. I love the bats. I miss them too because it is very noticeable here in southwest VA that they are going away. It has been a long time since the sweat bee, the honey bee, the fire flies and the varieties of butterflies were seen. Seems like they have almost gone over the last three decades.

The gypsy moth is taking over again worse than before and it is killing out our trees whereever the larvae cocoons are. The trees are coming down and their branches are collapsing due to the reddish disease that the cocoons cause. I have had one break from the mountain and fall on me and my husbands car as we traveled down a four lane in fair weather at about 4pm one day and total our car and nearly killed us. Two years later one broke and fell on our house from the mountain above us.

I think this fungus is more than meets the eye in many ways. I have noticed an increase in vet bills with fungal infections of the cats in our area within their ears, mouths and throats. Most of them we have had to put to sleep even after laser surgery and much medication regimes. Seems like it got worse when the mines and reclamation department made them seal up the mines above us and around us—the abandoned mines that is. My vet said he believed it was due to the water running out of the mountain and pooling in the level yards that the cats were drinking. The water even looked like it had oil floating in it and caused a blackish mold slime like stuff to grow all over the ground. The timbering for strip mines and such has been bad too because they left so many dead trees just laying that they damned up areas and caused flooding. After this happened we were swamped with copper heads and the black snake is not seen anymore. The copper head that was never seen before is crawling in our flower beds on our porches and biting our pets. I even watched one crawling across the pavement of our company parking lot.

I hope the forestry departments can get a grip on these things, somehow I hope they can manage to turn this around. They helped a lot when the raccoons over populated and were sick with rabies. They were biting the cats and kids in broad open daylight. They would walk sideways like hermit crabs staggering and loosing their footing. They were even bowed in their backs like a Halloween cat and they were so emaciated it was like they were starving to death. They would eat up all of our frogs and then dig them up out of the mud to eat them until there were no more frogs.

Man we really need a lot of help with the ecology a lot. I pray about it now. 

There has to be a connection to these fungus’s and the weather trends some how it may sound stupid but I think it has a lot to do with the electromagnetic waves. Because it set in and got bad when the light bulbs started browning out and growing really bright quite frequently. We had to go to all florescent about ten years ago just so we could keep bulbs longer than a week. The cats will be walking through the yard and house and act like they walked into a big spider web face first. They will back up and act like they have something on their face and go another direction I have even watched them loose their equilibrium and direction sense. Seams like it is in the same areas most of the time.

Help Help Help the animals and insects save the trees and fields.Come up with good science and reason to these problems quick. God speed I pray.

Thanks so much for this article! I’d been noticing the browning and shedding—on a large scale in this area—and getting really worried. I made a bargain with myself to wait until, say, July-August, let the trees go through their mysterious cycle, and not sweat until a reasonable amount of time had passed, then figure out who to call about it. Your remark about waiting until July, plus the explanation(s) for the phenomenon, have eased my distress.

This is a critical issue well articulated by Allison.  The message needs to be distributed to members of bird clubs as a link to the article.
If permission could be obtained from Allison, please advise me how to get the link and educate others.
Thanks.

And the answer is…large scale atmospheric circulation. The westerly winds coming of the Pacific Ocean are deflected over and around the western mountains forming a mean-annual standing wave across North America. Although the overall configuration of the wave pattern changes somewhat with the seasons, it is generally characterized by a ridge of warm air over the west, and a trough of cold air over the east. Treeline altitude is mostly dependent upon summer conditions (it occurs over a zone where average summer temperature is near 5 degrees C).* In summer, the western U.S. lies directly below persistent subtropical high pressure associated with the descending limb of the equatorial Hadley circulation.  This affords hot, dry air masses. If the land areas of the interior west were near sea level, summer temperatures would range from 30 to 40 degrees C; but given the high mountains and plateaus, temperatures are more typically between 20-30 degrees C. The northeast sees only a few bouts of subtropical highs each summer (also part of the Hadley circulation, but humid due to moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic Ocean), with the circulation instead being dominated by subpolar flow driven by a low pressure often forming over Quebec (associated with the polar frontal zone; the low pressure drives the blessed northwest wind bringing cool, dry, clean air from Canada). Summer temperatures near sea level in the northeast are on average around 20 degrees C. Ten to twenty degrees C cooler than expect near sea level temperatures for Wyoming and Colorado…  And THAT is the fundamental reason why treeline is so low in the east relative to in the west.

* Note that treeline for most tree species is not dependent upon winter cold. Proof is abundant: The boreal forest biome extends into inland Alaska and *Siberia*. These places experience brutally cold winters, but mild (or even hot!) summers.

We were on our way home from Manchester to West Rutland, closer to Danby than Dorset on route 7 when a large animal ran across the road in front of us.  I had quite long legs, a long tail and its head looked like a cat.  In doing an internet search, the closest thing I could find was a catamount.