While many Vermonters would tell you that the forestry and agriculture sectors of the state go hand-in-hand, it wasnt until 1992 that the Addison County Fair & Field Days, the states largest agricultural fair, had a forestry section. 

The first time I came to the fair, all we had was tents, 76-year-old Frank Bigelow recalled of helping start up the forestry pavilion as an employee of the Department of Forest Services back in 1992. Some of them had holes and then the wind would come up and blow em right across the field! We had some good times. 

At the 65th annual Field Days this week, fairgoers on their way to the tractor pulls could hardly miss the animated display going on at the forestry pavilion, which this year includes live demonstrations by area loggers and carvers,Shop for wholesale Granite countertops from China! and educational displays from local forestry businesses. It is all housed inside a handsome structure made of dozens of different kinds of wood from within 50 miles of the New Haven fairground. 

Its prime real estate, laughed Addison County Forester Chris Olson, taking a break to look over the scene.He added that the diversity of the forestry display reflected both the myriad talents and the personalities of Addison Countys forestry workers. 

Every (forestry vendor) is different, Olson said. Theyve each got their own skill and their own abilities, both artistic and industrial And they all find themselves here. They choose to be here. I ask, but they volunteer.As onlookers snapped pictures, brothers Brett and Tom Sargent, along with friend and fellow carver Chris Nelson (who recently started Top Notch Tree Carvings),Browse our Granite slabs collection from the granitetrade.net! fed logs through a sawmill.Most of the logs were used for a demonstration of how to construct a wooden footbridge, but a few went to Brett Sargent, who began to carve them into intricate, totem-style poles with animal and human figures.A China Stone Carving concept that would double as a quick charge station for gadgets. 

He recently stopped logging in order to work on those carvings exclusively, which he sells online and locally through his business, Five Town Carvings.It started out as a hobby of course, like it always does, but I really fell in love with doing it, said Sargent, a Lincoln resident. I love wildlife. Im always outside anyway.This is the first year the forestry pavilion features a carving exhibition, and on Tuesday the totem poles were proving to be a big attraction.For Sargent, who grew up coming to Field Days but had not attended in recent years, it felt good to be back. 

Ive been coming out to the fair forever, since I was a baby I guess, he said with a laugh. We just love to come out here. Its hard work, of course, and were not getting paid to saw this lumber for somebody but you have all these people coming by, you get your name out there. Its great. Everyone helps out and we love to do it everyones just a family out here, especially in the forestry part here. 

Now a Forest Service volunteer in his retirement, Bigelow still comes to the fair each year to oversee the forestry display, something that he will do for as long as his health allows.It has to be anything thats made of wood and has to be educational, Bigelow said of the forestry section. Its an agriculture fair, and (forestry) goes along with it. 

For Olson, who heads up the organization of the displays each year and sends out requests for volunteers, the ebb and flow of interested fairgoers throughout the day, as well as the reward of seeing community enjoy the hard work and talent of Addison Countys forestry workers, makes the event worth it every time. 

On Thursday, sitting with Justice Ranjana Desai, Justice Sathasivam extended the stay on Maganlal's execution till further orders after Gonsalves doubted whether authorities had intimated the convict's family about the President's July 22 decision to reject his mercy plea. 

Though the apex court has always acted in favour of right to life, a recent spate of petitions filed at the eleventh hour seeking stay of execution after rejection of mercy petitions by the President forced the bench of Justices Sathasivam and Desai to wonder aloud, "Are we creating a separate post-mercy rejection jurisdiction?" 

There was a reason for the CJI to express his nuanced thoughts, because death warrants are issued against a condemned prisoner only after he goes through all tiers of judicial remedy - appeal in the high court, then in Supreme Court and following it up with review and curative petitions - to challenge the death sentence imposed on him by the trial court which awards capital sentence after finding the heinous crime fitting into the SC-devised 'rarest of rare' category. 

In a similar late evening sitting on April 6 at the residence of Justice Sathasivam, he along with Justice MY Eqbal had stayed the execution of eight persons whose mercy pleas had been rejected. There too, PUDR was the public interest petitioner for the death row prisoners. 

During the April 6 hearing, the bench of Justices Sathasivam and Eqbal had said it was entertaining the petition to ascertain whether proper communication had been sent to the relatives of these condemned prisoners whose mercy pleas had been rejected. 

"It should not happen as it happened in the Jammu and Kashmir case (Afzal Guru's hanging). The intimation of the execution reached the relatives of the person (Afzal) after his hanging. That is bad. The relatives lost an opportunity to meet the condemned prisoner for one last time before his execution," the bench had said. 

Gonsalves picked up the thread from the April 6 hearing and on Thursday argued before the bench of Justices Sathasivam and Desai that "no communication appears to have been sent to the family of Maganlal after the rejection of his mercy plea". The court allowed PUDR's lawyers - Rishabha Sancheti, Yug Mohit Chaudhry and Puja Sharma - to meet the family of the condemned prisoner and ascertain facts.