A 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.
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The 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 .
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The 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.
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It 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.
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Once 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.
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Thirty-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."
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Tom 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.
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Maine 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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Tom Doak of Maine Woodland Owners has done many presentations on his list of “The Ten Biggest Mistakes Woodland Owners Make.” Here is a new list to think about: “The Ten Biggest Mistakes Woodland Owners Make When Having a Harvest.” The two lists overlap some. I’ll share the story of one of those calls I don’t like to get, as a reminder of certain things to think about when planning to have your woodlot harvested. This is a true story, though without some of the identifying details.
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Hibernation is underway in our woodlots. We can let the dogs out in the evening without worrying about them bumping into raccoons, skunks, porcupines and bears. Or can we?
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Maine Woodland Owners recently donated a full truckload of firewood to the Cumberland Wood Bank, with the 10 cords of wood coming from a harvest on a Cumberland woodlot owned by Maine Woodland Owners.
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A revitalized Forest Inventory Growth (FIG) website will help connect Maine students to the forests that now occupy 90% of the state’s land area.
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Pellet plants designed for small landowners are on the drawing board, and, in one case, ready to start up, as Maine wood markets adjust to the dearth in demand for softwood pulp produced by the closure of several paper mills.
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The abundant red-orange fruits of autumn olive make it easy to spot this time of year. A single shrub can produce over 50,000 seeds.
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Once again this year, a lot of white pine needles are turning brown and dropping off in large numbers. The cause is . . .
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Shrubby honeysuckles are not only invasive, but large enough to take over a forest understory. Lonicera morrowii, L. tatarica, L. x bella)are deciduous shrubs of Northeastern woods, sometimes found around old cellar holes.
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As the emerald ash borer (EAB) approaches the state, the Maine Forest Service (MFS) is preparing for likely quarantines, while foresters are hearing from and advising their clients about what the future may hold.
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The 127th Legislature adjourned on April 29, and is unlikely to return until a new Legislature is seated in December. Here are highlights some of bills affecting woodland owners:
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by Lloyd C. Irland
(This is the seventh article in a series by Lloyd C. Irland, originally published in the May issue of Maine Woodlands).
Most careful readers of Maine’s forest history know that the masts for the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” came from the Maine woods. Several individuals prominent in her career were also from Maine. Constitution is the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat; she now rests in drydock at Charlestown for a restoration, due to be completed in 2017. Here, briefly, is “the rest of the story”.
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by Llyod Irland
(This is the sixth article in a series by Lloyd C. Irland, originally published in the April issue of Maine Woodlands).
Reports by explorers Champlain, Weymouth, and Captain John Smith burst with superlatives describing the size of the trees they found on New England’s shores. They note their significance to the Navy’s needs, and the disadvantages should somebody else’s empire appropriate them. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Lords of the Admiralty were being squeezed by their Baltic timber suppliers.
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