Not in Tents, Just Intense



Winter is not a season when people think about tents, except maybe to be glad they do not live in one. I do have friends who love winter camping, and the fact they have never extended an invitation is evidence of how much they value our friendship.



Oddly enough, winter is a crucial time to look for signs of forest-tent caterpillars (FTC). In spite of their name, FTC do not weave a silken tent-like nest as do the eastern-tent caterpillar and other… Continue

New Online Tool Helps Producers Estimate Carbon Stored in Soil --- https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/home/?cid=STELPRDB1119532 ;

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New Online Tool Helps Producers Estimate Carbon Stored in Soil ---…

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Many of you have visited Cornell's Arnot Teaching and Research Forest over the past year and noticed some big changes, namely several large regeneration harvests aimed at replacing aging stands with new ones that are as good or better as the old ones in terms of future quality and value.  For those of you who won't make it back there anytime soon but are interested in following the progress, I'll provide periodic updates here.

Cradles and Cables

We are a clever lot when it comes to helping our kids settle into bed at night. Apparently, the story of how Jack broke his head fetching a pail of water, with Jill falling down the well after him, or the charming bubonic plague ditty “Ring Around the Rosie,” is supposed to calm small children. The veiled threat about abandoning an infant in a tree on a windy night always made my kids hush up. “Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop; when the wind blows, the cradle will…

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We're short?  How can that be?  We were way ahead of schedule for this year! 

With the recent cold snap, the need for firewood is relentless.  The Rotary of Walworth-Ontario needed an additional eight facecords and the Canandaigua Rotary needed two more, all to help Camp Onseyawa.   But.... we only had six stacked and ready to go.  So, a Flash Mob was called for High Noon on January 10 to make more heat!  Fortunately, thanks to Wagner Hardwoods, we have material that is ready…

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Decline of Garlic Mustard  @ 5:14

Timber Theft

Only the crunch of gravel mars the predawn quiet as a truck, headlights off, rolls to a stop. Working quickly, professional bandits round up your unsuspecting timber. As your herd of prized trees is prodded toward the tailgate ramp, their soft mewling is barely audible amidst all the rustling…

While it does at times parallel cattle rustling, with skilled thieves whisking away a few exceptionally valuable trees in an early-morning or weekend raid, timber theft…

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Every winter brings its annual a-salt on roads and walkways. In icy conditions, salt can be a good thing, but too much of it is worse than a bad pun. Cars, equipment, and concrete suffer in obvious ways, but damage to trees and other woody plants is much less invisible. Salt injures trees and shrubs by several means.



When road-salt spray hits twigs, buds and, in the case of evergreens, foliage, such direct contact causes yellowing of needles, and subsequent death of evergreen twigs… Continue

Senescence is the decline in vigor that happens to all creatures great and diminutive as they close in on the life expectancy of their species. People my age suddenly find it hard to read the phone book. Though I suppose by definition anyone still using a phone book is old enough to need glasses, right?



The onset of this process varies—you probably know of families whose members frequently retain good health into their 90s and beyond, and other families where that is not the case. Of… Continue

All of us are using more heating fuel this season than in recent winters, and there is still plenty of cold weather to come. It’s bad enough that our wallets are thinner, but those who heat with wood have the additional burden of more time spent lugging in fuel. And to add insult to injury, uninvited guests occasionally show up with the wood.

Firewood, I’ve been told, comes from “trees” which seem to be covered in “bark,” under which insects can hide. As the wood we bring inside warms…

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