Site Discussions

Just looking for some sawmills in my area to come bid about eight huge maples for lumber.

Many thanks to David Mance III for the blog on ice fishing…the piece delighted my senses and awakened, in these old bones, the feelings I had as a young mother watching this wonderful Vermont experience through the eyes of my children. While the piece had my mouth watering, I remember our hot dogs on a stick, chili and hot soup cooked over an open fire. Thanks for the memories that a child can carry for a lifetime…and a mother as well.

Sorry, Tom. Took me a while to dig up your request. Here it is:

Ch. 1 Estates in Real Property T27 (Rights of Entry for Survey)
In cases wherein the title of lands, tenements, or hereditaments may come in question, or in order to establish boundaries between abutting parcels, a licensed surveyor with the necessary assistants, employed by any of the parties to such disputed title, may enter upon such lands or real estate or other lands for the purpose of running doubtful or disputed lines and locating or searching for monuments, establishing temporary monuments, and ascertaining and deciding the location of a survey, doing as little damage as possible to the owners of such lands.

I tried to email John Rajala back to continue the discussion and couldn’t find a way to do that. I went to his blog, which is terrific. Click on his name above and you’ll go there. All sorts of great info, and really nice writing and photos of his work with wood and Minnesota’s forests. Thanks for participating, John.

The author is taking about a mid-December (2008 or 2009?) visit in the Carigan area with specialists.  Citing Barbara Burns report it is said that “no attempts is being made to eradicate or isolate the infestation”.  This is not exactly true because in March 2009, following a collaborative partnership between 3 provincial department (Ministère des ressources naturelles et de la faune du Quebec was the lead agency), the Canadian Forest Service, the Institut national de la Recherche Scientifique and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) , more than 150 suspect or infested ash trees have been cut-chipped-and burned in the Carignan area.  Even though, cutting infested trees is not considered by the CFIA as a way to eradicate the EAB, the previously cited collaborators believed that it could slow the spread of this insect and moreover give access to the biological material to support scientific research.  Actually we are working on the use of fungi to develop a biological control method against the EAB.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

Truly, Robert Lavallee, Entomologist for Canadian Forest Service

Stephen:

I enjoyed your article.  We in the Lake States are bound to you in New England by a common forest resource, a common desire for our industries to survive, and most importantly a common to desire to achieve real sustainability.

Thank you for your thoughts…they are spot on.

Dave closed by saying:

“The one thing we can do is keep banging the drum: don’t move firewood. Don’t move firewood. Don’t move firewood.”

To which I’d like to add: This is sort of like preaching to the choir. There’s an audience outside Northern Woodlands and concerned forest people that remains clueless and apathetic, and hauls local wood out of the area without a thought. They need to be reached through wider media campaigns and policing at the parks and campgrounds in all vulnerable states.

I was appalled several times last summer seeing people coming into Vermont and the Adirondacks with firewood stuffed in their rigs as part of their supplies for vacation. Since most, if not all, parks and campgrounds require visitors to check in through a kiosk, that would be a good time to look over vehicles and trailers. It would create an invasion of privacy uproar, of course, but that could be somewhat mitigated by posting signs at the entrances and restrooms, and on websites and in brochures, announcing that the parks will be doing this, so people will learn in advance.

I grew up on a farm in Orange, Vermont and often on a late afternoon in December I would see the ruffed grouse picking buds in trees along the roadway as I returned from school.  December being the Christmas season, I still, as I did then, relate them to the song of the 12 days of Christmas and the “partridge in a pear tree.”

The problem with the majority of outdoor boilers is that they aren’t used correctly… because the manufacturers don’t always tell you how to use them correctly. Almost all of these boilers are designed to gasify their fuel. Air is introduced in a way that the fuel is supposed to smolder, releasing flammable gases (largely CO), more air is then introduced to burn off the gases. The problem is that if you attempt to slow this gasification process by shutting down the air (damping) the flammable gases never burn, and leave the chimney as the thick whiteish gray smoke we see. When a wood fired appliance is hooked directly to a thermostat, this is exactly what it will do; when the thermostat stops calling for heat, it closes the dampers on the boiler, and you get incomplete combustion.

For this to work, the fire must be burned flat out as hot as possible, and the heat collected and stored in, for instance, a large tank of water. Then the heat can be taken from the water as it’s needed without having to control the fire. This is similar to what the Garn does. It has a huge reservoir of water that it heats up. With the addition of a properly sized heat storage tank, any modern gasifying boiler can become very efficient.

I had a catamount on my property in 2004. It was during daylight hours and I watched it from inside my house for about 5 minutes until it returned to the forest. I’m in the woods a lot as a fishing guide…etc. Definitely a catamount. I compare its size to larger than my border collie but smaller than my St. Bernard, probably 110 lbs. I recently (12/18/09) came home to find fresh prints of this animal. I have pictures of the print. When I make a fist, that is the size of this print. Please contact me for the picture or any info about this amazing creature.

Vermont Wood Pellet is located in North Clarendon, VT just south of Rutland, VT.  Our pellets are marketed as premium, but actually qualify as super premium based on the PFI standards.  In our last testing our pellets came back as: 

BTU/lb Heat Value 8389
Ash Content 0.27%
Moisture total 4.80%

If you have any questions or need any additional information please feel free to visit our website (currently being redeveloped, but still functional) or call us at 802-747-1093.

I grew up in a birding household and have gone on many birdwatching trips over 40+ years, and every one of the birders involved have used the term “pishing” rather than “spishing” to describe the sound we use to attract birds.

These folks are/were all from Connecticut; could it be we have a regionalism here? A Southern New England vs. Northern New England accent?

“Pish,” to my surprise, is actually in the dictionary, but the definition has nothing to do with birding: “[an interjection] used to express disdain or contempt.”

“Spish,” however, is a made-up word, surely devised for the purpose of attracting birds. It’s pure onomatopoeia: a word that sounds like the sound it’s describing.

Anyone know of other variations on this theme?

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?