It stands to reason that if we can replace steel and wood in buildings with locally produced wood, we can reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere. But calculating how much difference it makes is, as the Grinch would say, “complicatacious.”
Read MoreAs I write this, many of the thorniest issues the Legislature is grappling with remain unresolved. There has been movement of a number of issues related to woodland owners, however.
Read MoreHave you ever used an electric chainsaw? Maine Woodland Owners board member Mike Dann tried one out on his woodlot and provided feedback.
Read MoreVisit Maine's biggest white pine, located in Morrill, before it's removed later this year.
Read MoreIf you missed the 2017 training sessions of the Northeast Silviculture Institute for Foresters, you can watch them now from the comfort of your own home.
Read MoreAre you a birder or just a bird watcher? Take Bob Duchesne's quiz and find out.
Read MoreThe Christmas tree industry in the eastern U.S. dates to the 1800s. In 1901, a Norway spruce plantation was established in New Jersey for a choose-and-cut Christmas tree farm.
Read MoreOngoing mechanical, partial harvests can result in conditions that foster sprouting of diseased beech. Sprout thickets are dominating many of our best-quality hardwood sites.
Read MoreKeeping in touch with your woodlot is a continuing necessity for timely silviculture treatments, and for anticipating future conditions and needs. Monitoring seed crop cycles provides insight to natural regeneration dynamics.
Read MoreFolks who have been picking fiddleheads or mushrooms lately need to know that they are required by law to get the landowner’s permission. I’m sure this is a surprise to many of them.
Read Moren the Jura Mountains of Switzerland is a farm woodlot managed for individual spruce trees of the highest quality. It is a fascinating example of very intensive irregular aged management following a silviculture system ...
Managing quality spruce has applicability for Maine woodlot owners given the reduction in spruce pulpwood markets.
There are also American musical instrument makers buying some fine spruce logs from the Northeast for resonance wood.
Read MoreA pre-harvest tour of China’s Thurston Park last weekend inspired questions by attending woodland owners and town residents. Here are four questions about the harvest posed during the tour.
Read MoreThe transition into spring provides a special window of opportunity for reinforcing connections with our woodlots....Enjoy wildflowers along the forest floor and look up for the emerging catkins of the male poplar trees. Tree flowers tend to occur during the latter part of spring, but keep an eye out for them as you pass by emerging growth. Pull down a limb of red maple (Acer rubrum) for a closer look at their showy flowers .
Read MoreThe drumming of a grouse in the distance. A trailside tree peppered with rings of yellow bellied sapsucker pecking holes. The cry, like a squeaky wheel, of a black and white warbler as it flitted by. The forest at Pine Tree Camp in Rome was filled with bird trills last Saturday during the Women and Our Woods Outdoor Workshop.
Read MoreIt would be quiet if it weren’t for the ... almost non-stop “wuk wuk wuk” from three pileated woodpeckers. Their volume matches their large bodies. “ We have a resident pair as well as a third bird that’s spending the winter. Pileated woodpeckers have a 150- to 200-acre territory, so owners of smaller woodlots won’t have many pairs. It isn’t unusual to have more than one pair in winter, but come spring the visitors will be driven away if they don’t leave voluntarily.
Read MoreOnce each year, approximately 30 30-yard dumpsters are filled to the brim with discarded mattresses, old tires, car parts, and other items dumped on the land of woodlot owners. This enormous clean-up effort, undertaken by a host of volunteers during IF&W and DACF’s Annual Cleanup Day, only touches upon a fraction of the waste that is illegally dumped.
Read MoreThirty-three invasive, and likely or potentially invasive, plants have been banned from sale in Maine in a ruling that went into effect on January 14, 2017. Prohibition of sales will begin on January 1, 2018. Three of those plants have never been nursery stock, but rather, "horticultural hitchhikers."
Read MoreTom Doak, the executive director of Maine Woodland Owners, was a guest speaker this week on Maine Calling, a Maine Public Radio program. The topic was "Maine's Big Game Wildlife Plan." The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is currently working on rewriting the plan. To listen to a recording of the program, click here.
Read MoreMaine Woodland Owners has compiled a list of both portable and stationary sawmills in the state of Maine, modeled after the list that had been produced by The Maine Forest Service. This updated list of sawmills provides information about services and products, locations, and contact information. To see the list, click here.
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