Ticked Off

The downside of nice weather is that ticks like it too. Blackflies and mosquitoes can take the fun out of a day of hiking or gardening, but a single deer tick can ruin a whole summer if it transmits Lyme or other serious disease. Fortunately, there’s a relatively new tool in the battle against deer ticks: mice.

As recently as fifteen years ago in northern NY state it was rare to find a single black-legged tick, commonly known as a deer tick, on your person even after…

Theory of Language

I’m amazed how communication, more complex than a spider web and far more fragile, actually seems to work from time to time. Even among those who share a common tongue, each has an internal dictionary, none of which entirely agrees with the next person’s. My wife is francophone, which adds a layer of complexity to the challenge of sharing ideas in a relationship.

But an even bigger issue can arise when folks fail to notice they’re speaking different…

Let Them Eat Wood

Nearly all historians agree Marie Antoinette probably never coined the phrase “Let them eat cake,” a saying already in popular culture before her time. The phrase was ascribed to her by opponents to bolster her reputation as callous and arrogant. She would have seemed far more benevolent if she had said “Let them eat wood.”

From remote villages to five-star urban restaurants, people around the world consume all manner of delectable dishes featuring second-hand…

(Note: This is by Joe Hovels, a longtime forester and proponent of good silviculture from Wisconsin. If you like this essay, consider signing up for his newsletter Wisconsin Partnerships in Forestry at logcabin@nnex.net)

Water:A Tragedy of Responsibility Joe Hovels, Wisconsin Partnerships in Forestry Environmental problems place great constraint on all societies. The response of the society, its leaders in particular, determines the…

Trap Trees

When I hear the phrase “trap tree,” an image of Charlie Brown’s kite-eating tree in the Peanuts comic strip comes immediately to mind. But trap trees, or sentinel trees, are meant to nab a much smaller airborne object, the emerald ash borer (EAB).

The idea is to make certain ash trees more attractive to EAB, to serve both as a monitoring tool and as a means of slowing the rate of ash death. Early in the growing season, a chosen ash tree is…

(Note: This is intended as a resource to pass along to general audiences as an introduction to the issue. Peter has loads of detailed information on beech thickets on his blog and elsewhere, so the only thing Forestconnect members will gain form reading this is possibly a smile.)

Beech Gone Wild

The sturdy, long-lived and stately American beech, Fagus grandifolia, has been slowly dying out since 1920, when a tiny European insect pest was accidentally released…

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…

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…

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…

Golden Goose Forestry

Paul Hetzler

What do you call a dairy farmer who spends decades improving the genetics of a herd, then abruptly sells all the best animals to start a new herd from scraggly, unproven stock? Crazy, perhaps, or foolish at the very least, right? (Or maybe someone with a gambling debt).

Under normal circumstances, no livestock farmer culls their best animals to start over with random ones. Yet it’s common for a woodlot owner to sell all the large,…

Forget About Reforestation

Paul Hetzler

“Squirrels have been criticized for hiding nuts in various places for future use and then forgetting the places. Well, squirrels do not bother with minor details like that. They have other things…

Thanks for Giving

Paul Hetzler

Many historians feel the Pilgrims would have all perished during the winter of 1620 if not for food provided by the Wampanoags, on whose land they settled. The following spring, the Wampanoags gave the Pilgrims seeds to plant, as well as a tutorial (possibly an App; we can’t be sure) on the production, storage and preservation of indigenous food crops including corn, beans, and squash.

That fall—no one is sure if it was October or…