Blog

Pesky pests

Have you been out in the woods lately? If so, you are lucky the mosquitoes and flies haven’t carried you away. With all the rain we’ve had this year, we have breeding grounds everywhere. On top of that, there was news this past week of both a bird testing positive with West Nile in Marathon […]

Do you know what’s hiding in your woods?

Summer is here! Well, according to the calendar anyway. I haven’t seen the sun in more days than I care to count. As I write this, Memorial Day is just around the corner, and it is a great time for me to talk about the health of your woods. Lots of people will be on […]

Attack of the fungi

Learn how fungi and other diseases can kill your trees. In a previous article, I talked about how insects kill trees. Here I will cover how different fungi can kill trees. Let me start by saying that not all fungal infections are alike. Some can cause just minor damage to a tree, while others can […]

Something in the water

The spring melt is on, and every hike lately means wet feet. We live along the Wisconsin River, so I’ve been thinking about where all that spring runoff goes. In Wisconsin, we have what are called “Best Management Practices for Water Quality”. These are voluntary practices for forestry that help us protect our riparian areas, […]

Dealing with storm damaged trees

Often a storm will leave a tangled mess of trees that require patience and special attention to clear safely and efficiently. A while ago I wrote an article about my efforts to process three trees that had fallen into a pile following a windstorm.  This past summer, a storm swept through the area that caused […]

Dealing with problem beavers on your property

Beavers can make dramatic changes to a landscape and you need to learn to live with them, or how to deter or remove them. A friend of ours (let’s call him Wayne) has had a continuing problem with families of beavers taking up residence along the creek that runs through his property.  He bought the […]

The Mighty Bug

Insects, either individually or as a large group, can kill your trees, so it is a good idea to keep an eye out for them and monitor the health of your trees. I was assessing the health of our trees recently, and noticed some that looked a bit under the weather.  Many of the branches […]

Controlling invasive species in your forest

They keys to controlling any kind of non-native, invasive plant infestation is to attack it early and keep at it until it is completely wiped out. There are a number of ways to go about it and you can choose the methods that best fit you. We do a lot of work on our family […]

Recreation and Invasive Pests

As the mosquitoes start to disappear, and the leaves begin their fall beauty, we may be hitting our woods more frequently for hiking, horseback riding, bicycling or ATVing. But do you know what may be hitchhiking along with you? Many of the exotic plants, insects and diseases invading our woods are fairly immobile until we […]