2009 NH Outside Calendar Available Now

Our beautiful 2009 NH Outside calendar is now available. The calendar contains excerpts from published NH Outside columns, illustrated with original artwork by volunteer artists and spiced with daily tips and tidbits to help increase awareness of the natural world.

Subtitled connecting you with the wisdom and wonder of the natural world, the calendar itself reflects the purpose of our collaborative writing project: to give our many natural resources volunteers who love to write another way to share the humor, insight, and wonder they've found in the world outside their doorways.

We recruit people with a passion for the natural world and offer training, professional editing, and ongoing support in exchange for their written work. Most of their essays reflect on a private experience or encounter with the world just outside their doorways.

The only aim of our project: to connect readers to nature in some concrete, meaningful way. Every week we distribute a new essay to print media statewide and publish it to our NH Outside Web page.

Last year's calendar won a first-place award from the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE), an international association of communicators and information technologists. We think you'll find this year's edition every bit as gorgeous and useful. At $8.95 each ($7.95 for bulk orders), we expect the calendars to disappear quickly.

Webworms or Halloween Decorations?

Ghostly apparitions emerge from the morning fog.

Many are old bedsheets and tablecloths draped over the vegetable garden's best tomato plant or still-green pumpkins. (Just another week without a frost is all I ask!)

But the most impressive of these spooky sightings are the trees draped with masses of light gray, silken webbing. They're inhabited by a caterpillar called the fall webworm, which seems particularly abundant this year.

I suspect it's because our cool wet summer favored caterpillar survival and reproduction over that of their natural predators, various wasps for instance.

Those hairy webworms eating your leaves at the moment will live in the soil this winter as pupae, emerging next July as pure white moths. Then the cycle will begin again.

Unlike that spring pest, the Eastern tent caterpillar, the fall webworm isn't very harmful to the plants it feeds on. Unsightly perhaps, but the leaf feeding happens so late in the year that little damage is done to the health of the tree.

Why not think of the nests as early Halloween decorations? I know I've seen worse draped over trees.

Article and photo by Steve Turaj, Coos County Agricultural Resources Educator

Making New Hampshire Better for Working Families

First N.H. Summit on Work and Family October 29

UNH Cooperative Extension in conjunction with the New Hampshire Legislative Task Force on Work and Family will host the first annual New Hampshire Summit on Work and Family October 29 at the Holiday Inn in Concord.

A single goal: Start the conversation about work/family balance
"This meeting has an elegantly simple yet profound goal: to initiate a dialogue between business leaders and human resource professionals, state legislators, labor leaders and representatives, researchers and bureaucrats on how to make New Hampshire a better place for working families," says Malcolm Smith, Extension Family Life and Family Policy Specialist.

Without balance, quality of both work and family life suffers
"We know when workers are forced to neglect their families' needs because of work related pressures, the quality and quantity of their work suffers," Smith says.

"In addition, when work pressures and job strain pile up at work, our families suffer. Therefore, it's vital that business, community, state and national leaders pay attention to the many issues involved in balancing work and family life."

Strong slate of state and national presenters
N.H. Governor John Lynch and UNH Provost Bruce Mallory will welcome attendees. Among the national and local experts and business leaders who will share ideas and information at the Summit:

• Cali Williams Yost, consultant, researcher, executive, and author of Work+Life: Finding the Fit that's Right for You. One of the leading voices and most creative thinkers in the work/life dialogue, Yost sees work and life-fit as a partnership between employers and individuals.
• U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, recently honored by Working Mother magazine as one the "best of Congress" for working families in the U.S. Maloney, who represents New York's 14th District, believes that the federal government should set a national standard for family-friendly workplaces. Her new book, Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, has garnered national attention and her work and policy initiatives have been featured on national news and talk shows.
• Connie Roy-Czyzowski, VP of Human Resources for NE Delta Dental, will host a panel discussion of business leaders from small to large companies that have increased profits and attracted vibrant employees by focusing on work and family balance. Included in the panel will be executives and human resource managers from Citizens Bank, Timberland, Hypertherm, and Badger Balm, among others.

Other sessions include:

• A research update on best company practices from the Work and Family Institute.
• An exploration of U.S. Department of Labor flex-time initiatives.
• Examples of how work and family practice, policy and legislation can work together to create family-friendly workplaces.

The best part?
The entire day, including lunch, is free. But you must pre-register to attend. For more information about the conference and presenters

Note: Listen to Dr. Malcolm Smith and others discussing work/life balance issues on NHPR's The Exchange with Laura Knoy.

Plan to Burn Wood this Winter (or next)? Begin Looking for your Firewood Now!

If you're intending to burn wood to heat your home this winter, you'd better make your first priority finding the wood to feed it.

Firewood supplies are already scarce. Many firewood dealers are delivering seasoned wood to long-term customers only. Some, but not all, will deliver green wood, but many dealers have a backlog until fall.

The truth about green wood
The moisture content of green wood averages 60 percent to more than 80 percent by weight, depending on when it was cut.

It takes about six months to air-dry a cord of cut-and-split wood to 30 percent moisture content, and a year or more to reach the 20 percent moisture desirable for the safest, most efficient burn.

If you try to burn green wood, evaporating all that water from your fuel will use as much as 15 percent of its potential heat. Allowing green wood to smolder also promotes a buildup of creosote in the chimney, increasing the risk of a dangerous chimney fire.

Let nature dry your wood
In almost every case, it's more inexpensive to let nature air-dry your wood before you burn it. That means the green wood you buy or cut this fall might not be ready to burn until the 2009-2010 heating season.

How much wood do you need?
The amount of wood required to heat a house depends on a number of factors: the size and interior layout of the house, how weather-tight the house is and the type and efficiency of the wood stove. A 1500-square-foot, fairly weather-tight New Hampshire house will burn between four and five cords of seasoned wood during an average New Hampshire heating season.

High prices
A quick perusal of your local weekly newspaper will show advertised prices exceeding $200 for a cord of green wood and more than $300 for a cord of seasoned wood. Don't delay too long shopping around for better deals on firewood, because prices are bound to increase as winter gets closer and supplies disappear.

Don't commit roadside thievery
By the way, if you've been watching the tree crews trimming the branches off trees close to utility lines and thinking about stopping by later with a pickup truck to collect that wood, think again. Those trees and branches belong to the folks who own the road frontage, and you need permission from them to scavenge the wood.

Where to look for firewood
If you're in the market for firewood, check your local paper, or ask your neighbors and friends about dealers they might know. On-line classifieds, such as Craigslist, are good resources for locating wood as well.

Ask the dealer how long the wood you plan to buy has been drying since it was cut and split. Learn the species mix of the dealer's wood, too. The denser the wood, the longer it will take to dry. Oak, for example, may take more than a year to dry to the desirable 20 percent moisture content.

Know what you're getting
Be sure to clarify what measure of wood you are buying. By state law, a cord of wood is 128 cubic feet of air, bark, and wood. That's a pile of wood 8 feet long by 4 feet high by 4 feet wide.

A vendor may legally sell a fraction of a cord, but must represent it accurately as such (e.g., a half-cord). Remember that stacking a cord is an imperfect skill, so the cord will vary slightly in size every time it is stacked.

Buyer beware
Meet the delivery truck before the load is dumped to make sure you are satisfied by the mixture of species and cleanliness, and tell the driver where you want the wood dumped. Most firewood dealers don't want to return to your house to reload their truck. Ask in advance about any delivery surcharges.

Don't pay for wood in advance of delivery. Ask for a sales invoice that includes the name and address of the firewood selller, the amount and species mix of wood delivered, and the price charged.

Stacking and storing your wood
Unless you've arranged otherwise, it's up to you to restack the pile. Stack it outside in a well-ventilated area off the ground—used pallets make a good platform if you don't have a woodshed. Don't cover your stacked wood until about a month or so before you begin to use it. This will encourage natural air circulation to drive the moisture from the wood.

Even if you're buying your firewood cut, split and delivered, the work of stacking it, loading your stove all winter, and removing the ashes will enable you to understand the old adage "wood warms you twice." At least.

For more information
From cutting your own firewood to managing the ashes from your stove, our new Heating with Wood Web pages offer information on all aspects of heating your home with wood.

Workshops for woodlot owners
Want to learn more about cutting your own firewood? As part of our annual Caring for your
Forest workshops for landowners, we're offering a Chainsaw Safety for Weekend Woodcutters session. Sept. 26 and a workshop on Firewood from your Woodlot Oct. 3.

By Tim Fleury, UNH Cooperative Extension Forest Resources Educator

New! Heating with Wood

Thinking of installing a woodstove to beat the high cost of other fuels? Wondering if you can crank up a once-in-a-while woodstove to serve as your home's primary heating source?

If so, you'll want to check out our new Heating With Wood Web pages.

If you're just starting to investigate wood heat, you'll find there's a lot to learn. Even if you've burned wood for years, you'll want to keep up with changes in wood heating technology and firewood markets.

Heating with Wood offers information on these and other topics:

• Assessing your home for wood heat.
• Cutting your own firewood.
• Buying and storing firewood.
• Sizing, locating, installing and maintaining your wood stove.
• Burning wood safely and efficiently.
• The health effects of woodsmoke.
• Outdoor wood boilers.
• Managing the ashes.