Fast Faves with Joan Woodhead

As a longtime Concord resident, Joan Woodhead knows firsthand the benefits of living in the Capital Region. In 1966, her family, then with four young children, bought a farm just outside the center of the city. They became self-sufficient — raising their own food and...
Photo gallery: Call of the wild

Photo gallery: Call of the wild

Nestled along 210 acres across from New Hampshire’s second largest lake, the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness is a sprawling collection of fields, forests and wetlands teeming with wildlife from the natural world. The animals on display at the center...

Fast Faves with Xochiquetzal Berry

Fast Faves with Xochiquetzal Berry

For Xochiquetzal Berry, life and work are centered around food. A food systems specialist and certified permaculture designer, she’s passionate about helping other food-loving folks develop a resilient, equitable, and vibrant regional food system. She’s also the...

He’s making one giant pumpkin

He’s making one giant pumpkin

In a Boscawen backyard that evokes images of Jack and the Beanstalk, farmer Steve Geddes is again growing a beast of a gourd that could top 2,500 pounds And you think kids grow up fast? Check out Steve Geddes’ baby, in his vast garden behind his house in Boscawen....

History: Amid disaster, hero emerges

History: Amid disaster, hero emerges

Not every act of heroism takes place in battle. Concord’s only 20th-century recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor offers a case in point. On the afternoon of Aug. 29, 1916, Charles Willey was a 27-year-old warrant officer, a machinist aboard the armored...

Back on track

Back on track

These high-end 1880s-style rail cars currently parked in Contoocook can take more than six months to build, but once done they evoke another era Playing with trains is a near-universal pleasure, but few of us have taken it as far as Chi Hofe. Behind the barn alongside...

Tranquil & transcendent

Tranquil & transcendent

Boscawen retreat celebrates 10th anniversary with season that runs from May 22 to Sept. 17 On a recent morning in late April, the grounds of Avaloch Farm Music Institute were quiet, the only sounds coming from songbirds in the surrounding sunlit meadows and a cleaning...

Fast Faves with Dr. Jeffrey Fetter

Fast Faves with Dr. Jeffrey Fetter

A Pennsylvania native, Dr. Jeffrey Fetter, chief medical officer at NH Hospital, has become quite the Granite State transplant. He’s been an internist/psychiatrist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, worked at Concord Hospital, the state prison system and Riverbend Community...

A love takes flight

A love takes flight

From Sy Montgomery, the New York Times bestselling author of “The Soul of an Octopus” comes “The Hawk’s Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty.” When the Hancock author went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s Deering farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey,...

A net gain

A net gain

One of the signs of spring in New Hampshire is the hundreds of thousands of brook trout, brown trout and rainbow trout that get placed into lakes, streams and ponds all over the state. The fish are raised in six state-owned fish hatcheries until they reach a certain...

The need for seeds

The need for seeds

When spring comes, gardeners itch to get plants into the soil. The same goes for foresters. Tree lovers are descending on the Concord area every year to pick up their annual allotment of bare-root seedlings from the State Forest Nursery, which began by providing baby...

History: A not-so-rough past

History: A not-so-rough past

“In the Fall of 1896, Mabel Hill, Harriet Huntress and Paul Holden could be seen hitting golf balls into the fields opposite the West Concord Cemetery,” reads an entry in The Village of West Concord. “The following Spring, with the added help of Adam Holden, they...

Poetry: The Daffodil

Poetry: The Daffodil

I wish I could be as strong as the daffodil.   This herald of spring never permits winter’s   dangerous plan to scar her heart,   nor does she hold winter against itself.   She accepts its nature, while I sulk like   Schopenhauer when a friend...

A Thousand Words: Making a summer splash

A Thousand Words: Making a summer splash

Hanging around the city pools has been a rite of passage for many of Concord’s youth. It’s also where many learned their first doggy-paddle many years ago. The city of Concord has seven pools, and in recent years it’s been a challenge to find the staffing to keep them...