Site Discussions
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.
From "Log Trucks and Highways" »
Don’t forget Winterberry, Ilex verticillata, in our wetlands, too. Brilliant red berries if the migrating robins (and fawns, arggh) leave them alone!
From "Plants From Afar Brighten Yule Spirits" »
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.
From "First Snow" »
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…
From "First Snow" »
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.
From "First Snow" »
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.
From "Wishing Only the Best for Her Porcupine" »
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.
From "Clearing the Air: Outdoor Wood Boilers Face Regulation" »
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.
From "Wishing Only the Best for Her Porcupine" »
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!
From "First Snow" »
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.
From "Clearing the Air: Outdoor Wood Boilers Face Regulation" »
Hermaphrodites happen - even in humans. What isn’t natural is “transgender.” It is not a chance of nature to have some doctors mutilating a human body to subvert nature’s choice.
From "L-O-L-A Lola?" »
The crux of the whole outdoor woodstove issue centers on emissions. Tier 2 ( White Tag ) standards go a long long way to addressing this problem. You can see a you-tube of a Garn installed in Minnesota without need for a chimney. The exhaust is as clear as a balanced flue fossil fuel heater.
As for not breathing vehicle exhaust and suchlike try a trip up the CN tower on a humid summer day and see the smog blanketing Toronto. A month ago I was high up on the Pennines and watched a blue haze drift west to east over the hills from Lancashire and south Yorkshire filling the Holme valley. Wood burning is not an issue there but industry and transportation is. I own an outdoor wood stove and am dissatisfied with it but realize, and see, very efficient models are in use and plan to up-grade. Probably a gasification type.
For those in a suitable location wind turbines can power water heaters and the nice thing is that as high winds increase heat loss they also contribute to heat supply!
From "Clearing the Air: Outdoor Wood Boilers Face Regulation" »
A good object lesson for people who get worked up over sexual ambiguity in humans.
Gender-bending occurs throughout the animal and plant kingdoms. (Plants, especially, have some interesting arrangements!) Mother Nature is nothing if not creative!
From "L-O-L-A Lola?" »
The warmth of gas lights, the smell of pot roast, the barrel stove wafting through the night air and really good friends. To look forward to it only once a year is hardly often enough. Thanks Dave. Hiya.
From "Opening Camp" »
A couple years ago, my partner was riding her horse on our land when she came in contact with what appear to be thin kite string. On further investigation I found our entire southern boundary (3000+ ft) had this string on or near it, (it appeared deer had pulled the string in several directions). There was also flagging and cut saplings and brush near the pins. The neighbors to the south, that I spoke with, did not hire a surveyor. A local surveyor told that use of the string is common practice as is leaving it behind. The horse really does not like walking into things it can not see, let alone bright fluttering flagging that was not there the last time he came through.
Alan Baker
Shaftsbury, VT
Nov 23, 2009
From "In Sight of the Property Line" »
Foundation near logging road doesn’t sound like optimal bear den site, Carol, but you never know. It could have been. Check out this video:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8320000/8320414.stm
From "Bears Fattening Up for Winter’s Slumber" »
Thank you for this article. Having lost several feeders this year to hungry bears, we’ve been wondering how/when they operate so we can manage our bird feeding appropriately. The information provided answers our questions.
From "Bears Fattening Up for Winter’s Slumber" »
The key concept here seems to be: “one would hope that common courtesy and common sense would rule the day.”
Indeed. As a landowner of gateway property to other people’s hunting grounds, and who is surrounded by large parcels getting subdivided progressively each year, I can attest that courtesy is the bottom line.
Toward people who announce their presence and intention, our response is generous and open. But we are immediately hostile toward anyone who simply shows up and tromps around. If they started hacking up our vegetation as well, we would either call the cops, let loose the dogs, or challenge the invader directly, toting a shotgun.
If a surveyor is rude enough to trespass without communicating, he/she deserves whatever the landowner chooses to dish out. Most of us have phone answering machines, mailboxes, front doors that will hold taped or thumbtacked messages, and driveways that can accommodate parked cars with signs on them. We have no way of knowing that intruders have a professional and legal right to intrude until they inform us.
There are enough creeps and poachers around that one can’t automatically assume it’s just a surveyor or forester doing their job. A professional who is licensed to perform a land-crossing service should know, as part of that training, how to professionally interact with the public.
From "At Work Making Coffins with Richard Winter" »