At the start of this fall semester, students who moved into Dartmouth College’s Andres Hall were greeted with beautiful brand-new wooden furniture made from trees harvested on Dartmouth’s own land. Each student in the dorm was issued a bed, desk, dresser, and bookcase made from sugar maple cut last winter on Dartmouth’s Second College Grant, (the Grant), a 27,000-acre tract located in northern New Hampshire.
Is education something that can be finished? Shouldn’t continuous learning be a habit, rather than a requirement?
The Vermont Forest Business School’s (FBS) six-month Essentials program was built from lessons learned in two hundred or so single-day workshops I taught for loggers, foresters, and landowners over 24 years. Teaching workshops in far-flung places like Aroostook County, Maine, and Hocking College in Ohio exposed me to many different people with similar educational needs in the forest products community.
If you are a regular reader of this magazine, you probably know
a little about biomass, and perhaps a great deal. I hope to add
to that, provide some encouragement, and address some of
the controversial aspects. Some say that biomass energy is bad
for the environment and the atmosphere, and some say it is
an important tool for forest management.
The new owner of private land in northern New Hampshire plans to curtail logging on the property in lieu of selling carbon. In the July 2023 issue of the Northern Logger, I wrote that forest carbon markets are not affecting timber availability yet because there are so few acres under carbon projects in the US relative to the amount of forest being managed for timber.
In late May, the annual Loggers’ Expo (Northeastern Forest Products Equipment Expo) returned to Bangor, making it the 19th time it has been hosted by the Northeastern Loggers’ Association in Maine’s largest commercial center. The 2023 show represented a giant step towards the pre-COVID-19 shows that the industry has enjoyed for decades.
New Hampshire’s scenic landscape exists today due to the vision and actions of many taken 50 years ago. During the 1960s, the New Hampshire population was growing fast and so were our property taxes, particularly in the southern part of the State.
The export log market remains viable and very important for companies like Anderson’s. It also provides a diversity of markets for loggers and other suppliers in the Northeast and diversification is key to survival for any wood products business.
Reflecting on the opportunity to modernize, Wilcox said, “We created the app to make the manual easier to access, as well as to provide other tools that would be helpful in implementing the AMPs. Smartphone apps are a natural progression for outreach, and it will allow us to update the manual and tools easily and provides a platform for new technology to be added in the future.”
Mass timber, which uses glulam beams and cross-laminated timber, is starting to take hold in the commercial building field. Mass timber is much more carbon friendly – replacing traditional concrete and steel – and can often compete on price partly because the construction phase for this technique is so much faster than concrete and steel.
As I accompanied members of the northeastern delegations on their way to legislative appointments on March 23, the day of the American Loggers’ Council 2023 Congressional Fly-In, we admired how green the city was this time of year compared to up North, where there was still snow on the ground.