Mid-January is the start of amphibian (frogs, toads, and salamanders) breeding season! So, leave those fuzzy slippers by the door, put on a pair of mud boots or waders if you got ‘em, and go herping!
Northwest
Article
By:
Amanda Mahaffey
Forester and woodland owner Barrie Brusila of Mid-Maine Forestry in Warren, ME shares some of her lessons learned in a simple handout entitled "Timber Harvesting Do's and Don'ts."
Article
By:
Nicole Strong
An opinion piece by Amy Grotta after the November 2014 Oregon election on the GMO labeling. "Of course, the ballot measure had to do with food labeling, not trees, but it got me thinking that it might be worth looking at how GMOs relate to forestry."
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
In 1824, London’s Royal Horticultural Society sent the young botanist David Douglas on an expedition to the Pacific Northwest to study and to collect native flora and fauna. The sensitive details of Douglas's journey are marvelously captured by the contemporary author and naturalist Jack Nisbet in The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest.
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
David Douglas: A Naturalist at Work connects Douglas’s historical explorations with Nisbet’s contemporary ones. Nisbet opens the lens of history, as the text becomes a parallel experience where the reader visits places both in historical and contemporary time, effortlessly traveling between the two. Nisbet’s evocative vignettes follow David Douglas’s journals out into the field.
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
Part memoir, narrative nonfiction, and natural history, "Eating Dirt" manages to capture both what it feels like to engage in hard seasonal physical labor and what it might feel like if you were the forest itself.
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
"Seeds: One Man’s Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton" is dedicated to Horan’s love for “all the trees that have provided the vital wood flesh for millions of magical books throughout the ages.” Horan’s journey collecting actual seeds from famous authors’ trees is an engaging travelogue, homage, and memoir.
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
Christine Byl writes about place and our connection to land and the reasons why we labor rather than sit. Byl eloquently reflects on her chosen path of work: "If I felt my work aligned with damage and asphalt over trees and space, I would like to think I could never have done it this long."
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
Everyone I asked emphasized safety. Wives of loggers came up to me at church and asked if I was being safe. “Do you use chaps, eye protection, a hard hat, something for your ears, my dear?”
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
Eric Rutkow’s "American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation" focuses on trees, weaving a fascinating history of our nation through the foundation of our American relationship to trees. By seeing the historical lens of American formation through trees, Rutkow’s breadth includes a conservation, historical, and philosophical focus on trees as the foundation of our communities, laws, and civic virtues and vices. Rutkow writes, “How easy it is to forget that much of American history has been defined by trees.”
Article
By:
Nicole Strong
It makes perfect sense to heat with wood. We harvest from within a 10-mile radius of our home. We remove wood from the national forest, from fire-suppressed choked stands full of dead standing and dead downed lodgepole pine. This is forest restoration at it’s most sustainable.
Article
By:
Guest author
Income Tax Deduction on Timber and Landscape Tree Loss from Casualty
Timber or landscape trees destroyed by the hurricane, fire, earthquake, ice, hail, tornado, and other storms are “casualty losses” that may allow the property owners to take a deduction on their federal income tax returns.
Timber or landscape trees destroyed by the hurricane, fire, earthquake, ice, hail, tornado, and other storms are “casualty losses” that may allow the property owners to take a deduction on their federal income tax returns.
Article
By:
Amanda Mahaffey
Success looks like...
She had lost her husband two years before. He was always the one to do the forest management stuff while she managed horses! Now she was left without a clue of how she should manage the forest. Her plan was to just - let it be. Accompanying her friend who invited her on an informal Oregon WOWNet hike changed everything and left her in tears of relief. After talking with women on the hike who are managing forests on their own, she said she felt like she could do it too. She instantly felt she had a support network and a huge barrier was lifted. It’s amazing what a walk in the woods, with peers, can do!
She had lost her husband two years before. He was always the one to do the forest management stuff while she managed horses! Now she was left without a clue of how she should manage the forest. Her plan was to just - let it be. Accompanying her friend who invited her on an informal Oregon WOWNet hike changed everything and left her in tears of relief. After talking with women on the hike who are managing forests on their own, she said she felt like she could do it too. She instantly felt she had a support network and a huge barrier was lifted. It’s amazing what a walk in the woods, with peers, can do!
Article
By:
Renée E. D’Aoust
My mom called our forestland in northern Idaho a “spot of paradise.” Mom was the first to point out a grand fir that might fall, to see a moose on the pasture, and to notice Western larch needles changing color. She passed away eight years ago, and we try to honor her by caring for our forestland. Since my brother and I live far away, all of the work falls on Dad.
Article
By:
Tiffany Hopkins
Author: Nicole Strong, Extension Forester, Deschutes/Crook/Jefferson/Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
Event
By:
Kelsey Ketcheson
Sat, Apr 21, 2018 - 10:00 am
until 2:00 pm
Let's take a moment to deconstruct the green wall of vegetation which grows abundantly all around. What can you eat? What medicine grows right outside the front door? In the Spring, there are so many fresh young shoots and leaves to learn about in this afternoon of shared discovery; come take a walk and find a sweet or bitter snack!
Event
By:
Kelsey Ketcheson
Sat, Mar 17, 2018 - 10:00 am
until 2:00 pm
“Who-ga-culture.” Who the what?! German for "mound or hill culture", this ancient agricultural technique is used to construct garden beds from decaying wood debris and other compostable biomass plant materials. The process helps to improve soil fertility, water retention, and soil warming, thus benefiting plants grown on or near such mounds.