At Vermont Family Forests’ Anderson Wells Farm in Lincoln, a sweet, simple, 12′ x 20′ barn stands at the head of the long, apple tree-lined driveway. Likely built 80 or so years ago, the barn’s sills were set close to the ground, inviting moisture, and as a result, the dirt-floored barn was slowly rotting from the ground up. This summer, …
Turn over a rock or two at the edge of a mountain stream, and you’re likely to uncover a salamander. Chances are, it’ll be a northern dusky (Desmognathus fuscus) or a two-lined (Eurycea bislineata)—they’re both common in this habitat. Crouched along a seepy brook at Vermont Family Forests’ Abraham’s Knees land in Lincoln, I strike gold on my second try. As …
Come learn about edible and medicinal spring wildflowers with herbalist Ali Zimmer in this 11-minute video.
Up at Vermont Family Forests’ Wells Farm in Lincoln, we’ve done some pretty significant pruning of the 50 or so apple trees in the farm’s orchard. We bucked the larger-diameter branches for firewood. But we’re feeding the nitrogen-packed smaller branches and twigs right back to the trees they came from, creating white-fungus-enhancing ramial mulch. Apple trees are deciduous trees, native …
by Sandra Murphy Water rose around my boots as I stepped through the meadow grass by the little pond on VFF’s Anderson Guthrie-Bancroft land in Lincoln. As happens each spring, snowmelt and rainfall had saturated the meadow soil around the pond and blurred the boundary between water and land. On that wet April night, wood frogs chuckled and clucked in …
Spring salamanders need clear, cold, highly oxygenated, pesticide-free streams and springs. David Brynn explores how commoners can help.
With the help of Middlebury College students, VFF is launching a project to facilitate mutually beneficial access to private forestlands for Abenaki citizens.
In this guest blog post, herpetologist Jim Andrews discusses the ecological impacts here at home wrought by our current economic model.
Thursday, February 27, 2020 6:30 PM FREE ADMISSION Ilsley Library, Jessica Swift Community Room, 75 Main St., Middlebury, VT Join UVM Professor of Forest Ecology, Bill Keeton, as he explains how our forests can be more “carbon-friendly” in the face of a rapidly changing climate. Learn about the role of forests in keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, how carbon …
We depend on forests for clean water, sequestered carbon, and wildlife habitat. It’s time to look beyond Vermont’s current “timber as default scenario.”
