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Newsletter
| January 28, 2011
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EDITOR'S BLOG Proposed Maple Syrup Standards Dave Mance III
As a medium-sized maple sugarmaker (our tree farm taps about 2,500 trees), I have mixed feelings about these proposed standards. On the one hand, I'm distrustful of the food safety bureaucracy, as many small farmers are. You need only look at the dairy and meat farming industries - where off the farm sale of raw milk or farmer-processed meat is either intensely regulated or downright illegal - to see how seemingly well intended rules can lead to consolidation that squeezes out the small farmer...
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THE OUTSIDE STORY
Sheep, Externalities, and the Price of Grain
Chuck Wooster
We lost money on sheep this year at our farm. In the grand scheme of things, we're in good company: farmers in New Hampshire and Vermont have been losing money on sheep for going on 180 consecutive years, not counting the bonanza in the early 1860s when the U.S. Army bought a lot of wool at a decent price...
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WHAT IN THE WOODS IS THAT? Our Biweekly Guessing Game!
Our friend Dan Wing found this old car out in the woods behind our office. OK, antique car buffs, what is it? We're after make and model, and justify your guesses.
Every other week we run a photo of something unusual found in the woods. Guess what it is and you'll be eligible to win a copy of The Outside Story, a paperback collection of our Outside Story newspaper columns. A prize winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. The correct answer, and the winner's name, will appear in next week's column.
View the full image and enter this week's contest This week's contest deadline is 8:00 AM, Wednesday, February 8, 2011. |
Previous Contest Answer
Congratulations to our winner, Jackie Donnelly! Jackie receives a copy of our book, The Outside Story. We had over 50 correct answers!
Forester and naturalist Lynn Levine snapped this picture last fall. In all, there were about 25 apples in the crooks of trees at different heights - 10 feet in the air, near the ground, and every height in between. "It looked like an Easter egg hunt," she recalls.
She makes a pretty convincing case that she knows whodunit. Do you?
NW Answer: Red Squirrel.
We asked Lynn how she could be sure it was a red squirrel, and she indicated that each apple had clear teeth marks in it. She initially suspected porcupine, but found no sources that indicated that porcupines cache food. Red squirrels do squirrel away food, though. And the teeth on a red squirrel skull she had at home matched the marks on the apples perfectly.
Lynn has a new kids' book out called Snow Secrets - a work of fiction that details the tracking adventures of two six-year-old girls. To learn more about the book, click here.
Visit our What In The Woods Is That? contest archive. |
NORTHERN WOODLANDS NEWS
New York State of Mind
The New York chapter of the Society of American Foresters is holding their annual meeting in Syracuse this week, and Northern Woodlands' executive director, Walter Medwid, is attending the session.
Northern Woodlands is in a New York state of mind because in April we will publish The Place You Call Home: A Guide to Caring for Your Land in New York, an owner's manual for New York landowners. This is the 4th edition in our Place You Call Home series, following versions tailor-made for the Upper Valley, Catskills watershed, and Vermont. You can take a look at these editions online here.
These magazine-format guides show landowners many important things, including why buffer strips along streams are so important, why their woods and their checkbooks are better off if they use a forester's services, and how to evaluate their own woods as habitat for wildlife.
Distribution of the New York edition will be in conjunction with the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and Cornell University Cooperative Extension. When more details of the launch are available, we'll report to you.
Seeking Executive Director BERC, the Biomass Energy Resource Center, is seeking an executive director. BERC is a non-profit that works to promote community-scale biomass in Montpelier, Vermont. Learn more here.
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We Welcome Your Questions and Comments
Postal Address:
Northern Woodlands 1776 Center Road P.O. Box 471 Corinth, VT 05039
Toll-Free: (800) 290-5232 Phone: (802) 439-6292 Fax: (802) 439-6296 Email: mail@northernwoodlands.org General inquiries form
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The mission of the Center for Northern Woodlands
Education is to encourage a culture of forest stewardship in the
Northeast by producing and distributing media content to increase
understanding of and appreciation for the natural wonders, economic
productivity, and ecological integrity of the region's forests. Our
programs give people the information
they need to help build a sustainable future for our region. Through
Northern Woodlands magazine, the Northern Woodlands Goes to School
program, and special
publications, we make a difference in how people care for their land.
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