The Chilmark planning board this week took up the thorny subject of large houses, their impact on the environment and how to regulate them.

At a special meeting Wednesday afternoon that drew a small crowd, the planning board announced the formation of a large house working group charged with determining whether existing zoning bylaws should be changed to limit house sizes.

Planning board chairman Janet Weidner said it would be the first of many discussions.

Frustrated by policies that increase overfishing, a San Francisco-based environmental group filed suit in federal court last week against the National Marine Fisheries Service, charging that its most recent rule changes are allowing additional harvesting of bluefin tuna by expanding the fishing season.

The original posts and beams from the 1755 house sag with history. Bittersweet clings to the rafters of the 1850 barn. Milking stalls still stand from the 1950s, waiting for the cows to come home.

Tea Lane Farm has been many things in its more than 250-year history — a longtime dairy farm, once a vegetable farm and even host to a Revolutionary War contraband tea operation.

Now, with any luck the old farm off Middle Road in Chilmark will soon get another lease on life with a new tenant farmer.

Concerned down-Island homeowners and some experts are reporting an unusual and troubling abundance of the ravenous creatures. If confirmed the Island’s trees face a cruel spring, but it appears that the damage, though severe, may be localized.