By Logan Johnson Forests for Maine’s Future (FMF) began in October of 2010 by publishing 18 stories to FMF’s “Fresh from the Woods Archive.” Since then, we’ve published over 100 articles that tell stories from the Maine Woods. Topics range from forest ecology all the way to the communities that depend on forests and everywhere…
Back in the day, John Sweet Jr. was an ironworker who helped build paper mills. But in 1982 he made a big career shift into a much more ancient craft: timber framing. That was in 1982, and he’s never looked back. He figures his company, Sweet Timber Frames, on Mt. Desert Island, has done 70…
The party was eating lunch on a high rimrock when they saw the mother wolf come out of the river, shake off the water, and greet her pups. They greeted the happy scene with a fusillade of rifle fire — wasn’t it always this way? — then scrambled down to view the carnage. “We reached…
By JOE RANKIN Forests for Maine’s Future Writer What’s not to like about the eastern white pine? A majestic tree. Long lived. Producer of clear, easily-worked, durable lumber that takes stain well, glues up nicely, is moderately priced, readily available. And, it is one of those trees that responds predictably and readily to a handful…
Terrestrial invasive plants can wreak havoc with forests By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer Licensed forester Jeff Williams does the usual things foresters do: writes management plans, runs boundary lines, oversees harvests, lays out logging roads, marks trees. But more and more these days he’s having to deal with invasive forest plants. Pulling…
The effort to restore the American chestnut tree to Maine’s forest By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer The crew moves across the field, setting fiberglass poles, threading on plastic insulators, and stringing thick Fencing the Winthrop seed orchard (Photo: The Rankin File)black and white polywire around an orchard of tiny trees growing…
A talk with the author of “The Changing Nature of the Maine Woods” Andrew Barton grew up Asheville, in the mountains of North Carolina, and as a boy of 8 or 9 he was fascinated by salamanders, lizards and snakes. “My mom wouldn’t let me keep any in the house, which I think just stoked…
There are many forest types in the Pine Tree State By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer The Maine Woods. Writers use the phrase all the time. As though the entire state was covered with a blanket of spruce and fir and pine, with some maples thrown in. But as anyone who has walked…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer In the mid-’60s Eric Sloane wrote “A Reverence for Wood,” a tribute to the importance of wood in early American life. It’s lovingly illustrated with Sloane’s skillfully detailed pen and ink sketches of everything wood: burl mallets, basswood berry boxes, up-and-down sawmills, timber frame barns. Butter churns…
July 2011 By Joe RankinForests for Maine’s Future Writer On a recent summer day, while showing a visitor around the Penobscot Experimental Forest, the U.S. Forest Service’s Laura Kenefic and Robert Seymour, a University of Maine professor of silviculture, came across an old friend. Prone on the forest floor, it was slowly decaying into the…
