The North Pole is melting. Whether you embrace the scientific consensus that global warming is a man-made phenomenon or want to believe that it’s just a natural phenomenon, the Arctic ice cap is demonstrably melting away, leaving polar bears stranded miles from the seals they hunt to live. The melting ice will eventually lead to […]
winter
Yankee
A Stash of Perfection
With a frost warning up, last week I picked all the tomatoes left on the vines. And I do mean vines — these tomatoes were among the most vigorous, the most aggressive I’ve ever grown. I planted them, probably ten or twelve plants, in early June, as usual. I had dressed the garden with a […]
Green to Orange and Red: The green we see in tree leaves is the pigment chlorophyll. Stored in chloroplasts in the watery cytoplasm of plant cells, it is responsible for creating food for the plants. Chlorophyll uses the sun’s energy to split water molecules and recombine them with carbon dioxide in the air to make […]
New England
A Fall Trail Run
There are people who hike year-round. I am not one of those people. For me, fall is the perfect time to hike. Actually, the fall before hunting season is the perfect time to hike. And, just to clear things up, snowshoeing up hiking trails in the winter, in my opinion, is snowshoeing, not hiking, otherwise […]
Magazine
Hot Stuff on a Foggy Day
A few weeks ago I went down to the Worcester area to interview the World Champion Chili Cook, a guy named Jerry Buma. I’ve written about him for our upcoming January issue so you can read about him then. In the meantime, he invited me to come to the Chili-fest in Wells, Maine, this past […]
New Hampshire
Berries and Wild Apples
By Francie Von Mertens Peterborough Berry picking lures me out, adding a sense of productivity to my wanderings. Wild berries: June’s strawberries and July’s raspberries are small but flavor-packed. August and September’s blueberries and blackberries are abundant enough to bring home in quantity. Wild cranberry relish is a Thanksgiving tradition. Berries from the freezer show […]
Looking for fun fall activities in New England? Here’s a list of 15 of the best ways to celebrate the foliage season. The above fall activities in New England should keep you occupied for that season, but for the rest of the year, check out the following: Best Winter Festivals in New England Best Spring Events […]
Welcome to the September 2008 edition of “Jud’s New England Journal,” the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, editor-in-chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, New Hampshire. On the Road Again With The Old Farmer’s Almanac “What’s the winter going to be like?” is the usual first question. But my most vivid […]
Magazine
In the Orchard
I felt true sadness this morning when I saw a notice in the local paper about the death of Dwight Miller, Jr., a veritable icon in the northern world of fruits and vegetables. When I lived closer to Miller’s orchard in Dummerston, Vermont, I used to go there to pick apples in the fall or […]
Gardens
Ask the Naturalist: Foliage
This question isn’t as silly as it might sound at first. Unlike the orange and yellow pigments that are present in a leaf all summer (but are revealed only when green chlorophyll starts to break down and fade), the red pigments, anthocyanins, aren’t produced until autumn. It takes a significant amount of energy to produce […]
Magazine
Queen Bee | Mary’s Farm
Last fall, a young man who lives nearby knocked on my door. He wanted to know whether he could keep his hives in my field. He explained that his bees, living on the side lawn of his house, near the woods, had died. He didn’t know why. He thought they might do better in my […]
Are there trees and shrubs that flower in the fall that I can use in my landscape? — R.M., Lincoln, MA A good number of herbaceous perennials (soft-stem plants that die to the ground in winter) bloom during the fall in New England — including Aconitum, Aster, Chrysanthemum, Sedum, and Filipendula, among others — but […]