The Forest Society's mission includes perpetuating New Hampshire's forests through their 'wise use', or sustainable forestry. Working forests--those managed to provide a renewable wood resource--are more likely to remain as forests rather than being lost to development. Visit this page to explore stories and projects related to working forests.
With arm’s sweep, US Forest Service Research Forester Bill Leak gestured at the thick regeneration of beech, yellow birch, and sugar maple crowding a 30-year old clear-cut on the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest and said, “The northern hardwood forest is Nature’s answer to armor-plating …
Charley Hosmer shuffles out of his sugarhouse as I approach. He squints in curiosity and then relaxes in recognition. He ducks inside to check the boiling maple sap and I follow him. "How's it running?" I ask.
On the eve of the first measurable December snowfall, a time of thin ice and rattling beech leaves, I joined three colleagues on a rugged bushwhack to a remote corner of a Society-owned forest reservation. It's not often that the conservation business is as tangible as it was that early winter …
Hiking through 75 years of Forest Notes magazine archives reveals not-so-subtle cultural shifts that accompanied demographic changes and the afforestation in New Hampshire.
Over the past 75 years we lost scenic open vistas from hillside farms with pastures once devoid of trees. …
It appears we still don’t always see the forest for the trees.
Most people were duped by a flurry of media attention last summer erroneously reporting that New Hampshire surpassed Maine for having the highest percentage of state land area classified as “forest” in the nation. As …
By mid-summer, I noticed a faint yellow tinge to the foliage of aged local sugar maples lining our dirt road. I despaired at the possibility of some decline in their health. With more than ample rainfall, how could the maple foliage not be lush, deep green?
"May something go always unharvested! May much stay out of our stated plan, Apples or something forgotten and left, So smelling their sweetness would be no theft."
Robert Frost, 1936
My Christmas tree plantation is now a faded field of dreams. Five hundred balsams, row upon …
The afternoon sunset glows pink, reflecting off my windowpanes at 3:45. Against the lethargy of the approaching winter night, I trudge uphill into the gathering gloom, carrying a sack of wood shavings, a folding chair, a steel can of diesel fuel, and a box of wooden safety matches in my pocket. …
A boyhood discovery turns out to be the gift of a lifetime
The unmistakable scent of balsam was exotic to me when I was a boy, growing up on a street planted with ornamental hardwood trees in the crowded suburbs of northern New Jersey. The “Christmas tree smell” represented a …
