I found this graph on Google images!
I found this graph on wiki how.com
Size of Area
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Capacity Needed
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100 to 150 square feet
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5,000 BTUs per hour
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150 to 250 square feet
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6,000 BTUs per hour
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250 to 300 square feet
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7,000 BTUs per hour
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300 to 350 square feet
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8,000 BTUs per hour
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350 to 400 square feet
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9,000 BTUs per hour
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400 to 450 square feet
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10,000 BTUs per hour
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450 to 550 square feet
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12,000 BTUs per hour
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550 to 700 square feet
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14,000 BTUs per hour
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700 to 1,000 square feet
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18,000 BTUs per hour
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1,000 to 1,200 square feet
|
21,000 BTUs per hour
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1,200 to 1,400 square feet
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23,000 BTUs per hour
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1,400 to 1,500 square feet
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24,000 BTUs per hour
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1,500 to 2,000 square feet
|
30,000 BTUs per hour
|
2,000 to 2,500 square feet
|
34,000 BTUs per hour
|
If you live in the country, you may already know about keeping a woodpile stocked. But even many city neighbourhoods are more like forest villages than concrete jungles. These places, too, are great sources of black-out-proof, carbon-neutral home heating fuel.
Wherever trees die, break off in the wind, or outgrow their allotted space, you'll find the potential for firewood. I say potential, because having trees (or friendly neighbours that do) is just the first and easiest part of the operation. Making that wood conveniently and effectively burnable in a woodstove orfireplace comes next. Sounds like work, and that’s because it is. But as usual, there are two ways to look at the job: It's either drudgery you should avoid by stocking up on artificial wax fire logs, or a fitness regime that also warms your house. When it comes to making firewood, I see the glass as half full.
That’s why I’m happy to share what I've learned over 20+ years of heating my house with wood and elbow grease. There's nothing like the security of a well-stacked wood pile.
The challenging part of making firewood is the splitting -- cleaving sawn logs along the grain lengthwise. Why bother? Because most logs are too big to fit comfortably in a woodstove or fireplace, and splitting is the best way to make them thinner. And even if they aren't too big, split wood burns better because it dries more thoroughly without a continuous wrapper of bark.
The problem with the whole business of splitting firewood is that it's proven annoyingly resistant to domination by modern technology. Yes, there are hydraulic log splitters out there to ease the burden, but they're costly and loud. Unless you've got a mountain of knotty wood to split, a good axe is quicker, quieter and better for your health. The correct splitting axe is key though, and the tool's attributes may surprise you.The splitting axe is the quintessential blunt instrument, one for which there's no substitute. Don't even try to split firewood using a regular axe with its too-thin profile. Splitting axes don't have to be sharp, but they do need to be heavy (6 lbs. to 8 lbs.) and bluntly angled in cross-section. This angle is what drives the log apart and stops the axe from sticking in the wood uselessly. The axe you see here on the left is wonderful. It’s been with me for 25 years and we’ve split hundreds of cords of wood together.
But there's another problem with splitting firewood, a hitch that the best splitting axe won't cure. How do you hold up the wood on it's end before hitting it? All the firewood I make goes through the car tire arrangement you see here. They're bolted together through the sidewalls in three places, forming the ideal holder for all but the largest logs. Just drop the wood in on-end, and bang-away with your axe as many times as needed. You never have to bend down and stand another log up before hitting it again because nothing falls over. Another bonus is the way the sidewalls act as a cushion for the ax handle, keeping the blade from hitting the ground, without need for a chopping block. Got a loose axe handle? Try Chair Doctor (Lee Valley Tools 800-267-8767). It's a thin viscosity adhesive that wicks into the end of the handle, swelling the wood and locking it within the axe head.
Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/firewood-splitting-tips.aspx#ixzz2k69pAVeK
Have you considered heating with wood? In many parts of North America, firewood is cheap and plentiful, so wood heat could potentially save you money. Not only does a woodstove give you a reliable source of heat even when the power goes out, it’s also a green option, because wood is a renewable resource when harvested sustainably.
Deciding which woodstove to buy can be tough, however, even if you’ve been heating with wood for years and are simply looking for a replacement stove. You’ll find a huge range of options in sizes, shapes, materials and technologies. Also, there are few recognized woodstove experts and no reliable ratings that use consistent criteria to fairly judge all the options. So how do you choose the best woodstove for you?
Woodstove Dealers and Brands
I recommend finding a good dealer first, then selecting from that store’s stock. Working for more than 30 years in the wood heating business has taught me that no one can tell you exactly what stove to buy, because all kinds of personal preferences influence the final choice. However, a good dealer can be a great resource. Look for one who has been in the business for a number of years, heats his or her home with wood, and has burning models in the showroom. Keep in mind that only people who burn wood regularly can give you reliable advice about woodstoves.
Next, pay attention to woodstove brands. In my opinion, the ideal stove is built by a company with at least 20 years’ experience in wood heating because it’s more likely to honor the warranty and continue to carry replacement parts.
For example, the stove in my house is a Super 27 built by Pacific Energy. The model has been on the market more than 20 years, and its combustion system has been revised at least twice during that period, mostly to make it more durable. I’ve rebuilt three older versions of the Super 27, one of my own and two for friends who own them. The current parts found in new stoves fit perfectly in older stoves that were originally sold with quite different internal parts. You can certainly find other stove manufacturers that follow the same thoughtful approach when they upgrade their products.
In fact, a sizable group of North American stove manufacturers has been around long enough to learn what makes people happy with their products. These are the makers of mid-priced steel stoves, a category that dominates the market. Over the years, I’ve watched these companies and been impressed with their corporate stability and product consistency. These brands include Quadrafire, Lopi and Avalon (both made by Travis Industries), Regency, Pacific Energy, and some regionally popular brands including Buck, Harman and Blaze King. In addition to this group of mainly steel stove manufacturers, the Jøtul brand of cast-iron stoves merits a mention because this company’s products seem to consistently satisfy people’s needs.
Of course, this is just a sample of the many good brands you can choose from, and even among these brands there may be stoves that do not meet expectations. The brands I am most familiar with have all, at one time or another, produced a dud stove that didn’t perform well or that had features people didn’t like. I have also heard users complain about stoves that I think are among the best, which just goes to show that tastes differ widely.
Woodstove Features
To choose a woodstove you’ll be truly happy with, you should also review some common features of woodstoves and consider how they will affect you during your day-to-day use of the stove.
Materials. Most woodstoves are made from either welded steel or cast iron, and with today’s stoves, there’s no difference between the two in performance or durability. The choice is strictly one of personal preference.
Soapstone stoves are a special case. The stone on the stove absorbs heat and releases it slowly, thereby evening out the normal fluctuations in woodstove output. While this has some advantages, it also tends to mean that soapstone stoves are slow to respond when heat is needed. If you’ll be running your woodstove constantly all winter, and will rarely need to start it cold, a soapstone stove may be a good fit for you — or maybe you just love the look of a soapstone stove. In any case, you’ll want to be aware of its particular characteristics before buying one.
Combustion System. Some stoves use a catalyst to clean up smoky exhaust, and others use special firebox features to do the same job. The basic trade-off is that catalytic stoves can burn cleaner on average than “non-cats” and can be more efficient under some conditions, but “cats” are also more complicated to operate and their maintenance costs can be higher.
An experienced dealer of catalytic stoves once said that cats work well for technical types — the kind of people who tinker with antique sports cars. But for users with little mechanical aptitude, a non-cat may be a better choice. Non-cats normally have only one operational control, and they’re more tolerant of various firing techniques.
Heating Capacity. Selecting the right size of woodstove for the heating load is a challenge, because manufacturers’ performance specifications are not standardized and can be misleading. For example, one common measurement is the maximum heat output rating, but knowing this number is about as meaningless as knowing the top speed of a car — you should never use it. Heating capacity in dwelling square footage can also be misleading, because regional differences in climate and home construction make for a wide range of heating loads per square foot. This is where an experienced dealer can be a big help. Dealers learn how each stove behaves and know how satisfied customers have been with various models.
Log Length. Some manufacturers’ specification sheets imply a firebox that takes long pieces is an advantage, but you’re unlikely to need this feature. Commercial firewood dealers usually cut wood to a standard length of 16 inches — with good reason. Most people find pieces longer than 16 inches too awkward and heavy to handle comfortably.
Handling Coals and Ash. Look for a stove in which the firebox floor is at least 3 inches below the doorsill. This drop will help keep live coals inside the firebox — and off your floor — while you’re doing normal fire management.
Ash pans are a common optional feature, but many stove shoppers demand an ash pan on the assumption that it will make ash removal easier and neater. This may be true in some cases, but many of the ash pans I’ve seen and used are worse than not having one. Some are so shallow they can’t hold more than a day or two of ash production. Some involve removing a plug from the firebox floor, which can be a fussy, time-consuming job. Others are designed so poorly that when they’re removed for emptying, ashes are likely to spill all over the hearth. Compared with dealing with badly designed internal ash pans, the regular use of a small bucket and shovel isn’t so bad — I haven’t used an internal ash pan for many years and am a happier woodburner for it.
Woodstove Shape and Door Features. Manufacturers like to offer stoves that are wider than they are deep. These stoves project less into the room compared with other shapes, and they offer a wide expanse of glass for a panoramic view of the fire. Both of these advantages may seem attractive in the showroom, but they can have unfortunate consequences when you start using the stove. For example, a wide loading door can be awkward because you have to move back from the stove to allow it to swing open.
Also, the wide but shallow firebox gives a so-called east-west firebox orientation, meaning that when looking through the glass door, you see the sides of the logs. East-west loading limits the amount of wood per load because logs can fall against the glass if you fill the stove more than about half full. North-south loading, in contrast, tends to be best for full-time winter heating because more wood can be loaded for the coldest nights, and there is no risk of logs rolling against the glass. The best of both worlds is a firebox with a roughly square floor so you can choose which way to load logs.
Top Loading. This can seem like a great feature when inspecting stoves on the showroom floor, but top loaders can be messy to maintain. Also, the chimney must produce strong draft to keep smoke from rising out of the open top. If you have an outside chimney or must have elbows in the flue pipe, a top loader could contribute to poor indoor air quality by spilling exhaust whenever it is loaded. Finally, top loading does not allow for precise log placement, which can lead to serious frustration when trying to load firewood.
Final Thoughts for Choosing the Best Woodstove
Here’s a three-step process to go through when determining how to choose a woodstove that is right for you. These steps virtually guarantee your new stove will meet your needs.
1. Go through the discussion of features in this article and rule out the woodstoves that don’t make sense for you and your family.
2. Of those left, match the stove’s heat output and features to your needs based on your climate zone, house size and house configuration (using advice from a trusted dealer).
3. Of all the stoves that meet the first two criteria, choose the one most attractive to you.
2. Of those left, match the stove’s heat output and features to your needs based on your climate zone, house size and house configuration (using advice from a trusted dealer).
3. Of all the stoves that meet the first two criteria, choose the one most attractive to you.
Follow these steps, and you can’t go wrong.
Read more: To get more advice from John Gulland, check out some of his previous MOTHER EARTH NEWS articles on energy efficiency and safety.
John Gulland is a wood heat consultant and educator who has been working with woodstoves since 1974. Visit Wood Heat, John's online organization, to learn more.
Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/how-to-choose-a-woodstove-zm0z11zphe.aspx#ixzz2k6EtY4ib
How to Get the best Firewood!
Firewood is better than money in the bank. It’s the tangible result of your labor, and it represents warmth and security through winter. If you know how to dry firewood properly, wood heat can be a clean, renewable energy that’s more accessible than solar or wind.
The three essential ingredients for efficient and environmentally appropriate wood heating are good stove technology, good fire-building techniques and good fuel. We’ve covered the first two topics in the past (see “Resources” at the end of this article). Now let’s look at what you need to know to have the best firewood.
Knowing how to dry firewood correctly is essential: Every serious wood burner must understand that wood dries slowly. Good firewood should have a moisture content between 15 and 20 percent, and it takes a long time for newly processed wood to dry to that level because the native moisture content of trees ranges from 30 to 50 percent. The efficiency losses resulting from burning wet wood can be as much as 30 percent, so drying firewood properly prevents a lot of wasted wood and results in wood that burns much more cleanly!
Here is a one-sentence prescription for good firewood: Logs should be cut to the correct length, split to the right size range for your heater, and stacked off of the ground in single rows in the open in early spring to be ready for burning in fall.
However, hard species such as oak and hickory usually take longer than a summer to dry. Bigger chunks of firewood dry more slowly, and if you live in a damp climate, your wood will take longer to dry. If you don’t have an open, sunny location to stack your wood, it may take more than the summer to dry. Unless your conditions for drying firewood are optimal, you should prepare your firewood a year ahead.
How to Dry Firewood: The Basics
Firewood that isn’t dry is slow to ignite. It smokes and smolders in the fire, causing both indoor and outdoor air pollution and leaving creosote deposits in the chimney. But that’s not all.
It takes a lot of energy to heat and vaporize the water in wet wood. Up to 15 percent of the energy content of green wood can be consumed turning water into steam and superheating it to the combustion temperature. Wet wood is so reluctant to burn that part of its potential heat energy is wasted as smoke, and it creates a sluggish fire that will smolder and make little heat unless the air control is left wide open. But an open air control will cause much of the heat produced to be rinsed out of the firebox and right up the chimney by such a high airflow rate.
In contrast, properly seasoned wood lights easily, burns cleanly and efficiently, and will continue to flame even if the air control is turned down for an extended burn.
There are several indicators of firewood moisture. Use all of these indicators in judging your firewood’s moisture content, because relying on just one or two could give a false result.
- Dry wood is lighter in weight.
- Dry wood has cracks in its end grain.
- If you bang two pieces of dry wood together, the sound is hollow, whereas wet wood makes a dull thud.
- Firewood darkens from white or cream to gray or yellow as it seasons.
- The exposed face of a freshly split piece of seasoned wood feels warm and dry, but green wood feels cool and damp.
- Green firewood sizzles in a fire.
You could also use a wood moisture meter, although they can be costly and the manual methods will work just as well.
Where to Buy Firewood
You should first consider how much firewood you will need before buying. I burn about four full cords for my annual heating and cooking needs here in Ontario, Canada, but the amount of wood you will need depends entirely on house size and age, climate zone, and whether wood is a primary or supplementary heat and energy source.
Finding cheap firewood is like a hobby among many hard-core woodburners, and people new to wood heating often worry about being overcharged or getting poor-quality wood from a dealer. Although the key to lower cost is to do more of the processing yourself, you don’t need to become a lumberjack to reduce your wood fuel costs. Here are four ways to save on firewood:
1. If you have a suitable vehicle, pick up the wood yourself.
2. Get your wood delivered in log lengths from a logging company so you can cut it to length and split it yourself. You won’t need a truck, but you will need a chain saw and probably a splitter. In addition to sizable cost savings, you’ll get to custom cut and split the wood exactly as you want it.
3. Scavenge wood from various sources, including tree removal companies, mill cutoffs, and neighbors who take down old trees. Sharp-eyed scavengers can get their whole year’s worth of firewood for just the cost of picking it up.
4. The ultimate way to save money is to harvest and process the trees yourself, using trees from your own property or from public lands under a firewood permit you’d purchased from the government. Either way, the cost of the wood is low, but you’ll need some serious equipment (at least a truck or trailer and a chain saw), physical strength and a number of skills that take time to learn. The most difficult challenge is gaining enough experience so you can properly use and maintain a chain saw and fell a tree without getting into trouble. Professional logging is one of the most dangerous occupations in North America, and the risk to amateurs harvesting logs for firewood is even greater because of inexperience. (See “Resources” at the end of this article for more on felling trees.)
How to Know You’re Getting Good Value
The only way to compare firewood prices is if the amount of wood offered for a given price is expressed as a volume, which is termed a “cord.” A full cord of wood is a stack 8 feet long, 4 feet wide and 4 feet high, with a volume of 128 cubic feet (1,728 cubic inches). Dealers usually sell fractions of cords, and they may use the term “face cord,” which should be a stack 8 feet long, 4 feet high and as wide as the individual pieces (normally between 12 and 24 inches). The most common firewood length is 16 inches, and a face cord of 16-inch logs has a volume of about 43 cubic feet — one-third of a full cord.
Provided you know the average piece length in a stack, you can calculate how many cords the stack contains to compare prices among suppliers. To determine how many full cords are in a stack, multiply the length of the logs by the height of the stack, then again by the width of the stack, all in inches. Next, convert the volume to cubic feet by dividing by 1,728. Divide that result by 128 for the number of full cords.
Beware of dealers who offer to sell you a pickup truckload or a random pile of wood, as it will be difficult to calculate the wood’s volume. You should stack the wood and measure it to be sure you have received the volume you paid for if you cannot buy it already in a stack or if you have it delivered.
Qualities of the Best Firewood
The length of firewood pieces should be consistent for efficient stacking and burning. Of course, when you cut up a log and you get to the last piece, it is rarely the right length. If you adjust the length of the last couple of cuts to create full-length pieces, you can end up with some pieces that are too long to fit properly in your heater. Let the last piece be a short one, which you can split for kindling.
Firewood pieces should be at least 2 inches shorter than your firebox so they can be loaded easily without jamming. But the firebox dimension is not the only guide. For example, some woodstoves and heating fireplaces have fireboxes as wide as 2 feet. Handling firewood that is more than about 16 inches in length is difficult, and will make stoking the fire an unpleasant task.
Excellent firewood is split to the proper size range. Using a range of piece sizes makes stoking the fire more convenient and results in less air pollution. Smaller pieces ignite more quickly and, because you will need to light new fires frequently and rekindle from coals a few times a day, these smaller pieces can make your fires respond more quickly and waste less fuel as smoke. An additional benefit of smaller pieces is that they dry more quickly than large chunks of wood.
The old-timers used to split firewood only minimally, leaving it in fairly big blocks because old, leaky cast-iron stoves would burn out of control if fed smaller pieces of dry firewood. Modern wood heaters have smaller fireboxes, and houses are more energy efficient than they were 50 years ago. Today’s advanced combustion heaters do best on a diet of firewood split far smaller than was traditional. For most modern heaters, no piece should have a cross section wider than 6 inches across, and most of the pieces should range from 3 to 6 inches. Wood furnaces and boilers have large fireboxes in which big fires are burned, so they can handle bigger pieces of firewood — but no wood for home heating should have a diameter greater than 8 inches.
The traditional view is that the best firewood is from hardwood tree species. In some regions, the hardest species available are oak or maple. In others, especially in the West and North, birch or fir can be the hardest local woods. A given volume of oak or maple has almost twice the energy content of and produces a longer-lasting fire and hotter bed of charcoal than soft species such as poplar, aspen or willow, so fewer cords would be needed.
But let me offer another take. You will need to run your stove at high output for only two or three months in winter. In spring and fall, you won’t need as much heat or especially long-lasting fires, so you can burn softer wood species during milder weather. Plus, softwood fires don’t overheat the house if you just need to take the chill off in the morning.
Good Firewood Is Clean. If logs were skidded through mud during harvesting, they will make less desirable firewood. Your saw’s chain will need sharpening after every few cuts because the grit in the tree bark will be like sandpaper. Also, your wood storage area will become dusty, and the dust kicked up as you stack the wood will make stacking an unpleasant task and will end up in the wood box in your living space. Look for firewood that was harvested and moved in winter so its bark is free of dirt.
How to Split Firewood
Some people love splitting firewood by hand. Other people, like me, hate it, even though I have spent many hours doing just that. If you decide to split wood, start with the right equipment and setup.
Regular axes are not the best for splitting wood because they are too light and tend to get stuck. Use a splitting maul, which is like a 6- or 8-pound sledgehammer with a blunt blade at one end. When you swing it, you develop a lot of momentum, increasing your chances of a successful split.
You’ll need a big piece of tree trunk about 18 inches in diameter and 12 to 18 inches tall to make a solid splitting block. Getting the log up off the ground will help each strike hit at about the right angle and reduces the chance that a missed swing will hit your feet. (Speaking of feet, you’ll also need some tough boots, preferably a pair with steel toes. Leather gloves are also advisable.)
Here’s an innovation to make splitting firewood much easier: Fasten an old tire to the top of your splitting block by cutting tabs on one side, folding them down and screwing them to the sides of the block (see illustration in the Image Gallery). Place the logs to be split inside the tire, and when you strike them with the maul they will stay put until you have split them into as many pieces as you want. This will greatly reduce the number of times you’ll need to bend over to pick up pieces, which can be the most tiring part of splitting by hand.
If you have a serious amount of wood to split you can up the ante by buying or renting a power splitter (see illustration in the Image Gallery). Splitters come in a range of sizes, capacities and prices, from light-duty, bench-mount electric models, to gas-powered splitters on wheels, to tractor-mounted wood splitter attachments. Prices range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.
Some homesteaders use electric chain saws and wood splitters powered by off-grid, solar-electric generating systems to produce firewood with a tiny carbon footprint.
However you split your wood, I highly recommend using a kindling maul — similar to a splitting maul but weighs only 2 or 3 pounds and has a 12- to 14-inch handle — to process your wood into kindling. Its extra weight and momentum will out-perform an axe or hatchet, and the tool is much safer because it’s not as sharp.
How to Stack Firewood
Firewood dries fastest if it’s stacked in a single row out in the open where the sun can warm it and breezes can blow away the moisture. This means the wood should be stacked for drying away from the house, then moved to the house and stacked again just before the heating season starts.
It’s a good idea to cover the tops of the piles, although this is not critical until the last month of drying. If the fall weather is rainy, as it can be in many regions, the rain-soaked wood will end up in your wood storage area, which won’t be desirable.
You can stack the green wood in a shed to dry, but it will take at least twice as long to dry. Some people do this and it works fine, but don’t deceive yourself into thinking that wood stacked in a woodshed will dry over the summer months. It won’t, unless you live in a desert. Whichever method you choose, your wood heating adventures should soon stack up to serious savings.
Resources
Woodstoves and Fire-Building Techniques
Felling Trees
Managing Firewood
Firewood enthusiast and wood heat expert John Gulland has written extensively on heating with wood and processing wood fuel. Find out more about wood heat and all things firewood at Gulland’s website dedicated to wood heating tips and techniques.
Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/how-to-dry-firewood-zm0z11zkon.aspx#ixzz2l2PogJoo
Timber sets — simply called the “woods” by most farm youngsters — are an integral aspect of country life. They offer wildlife habitat, firewood for heat, forage for animals, shade, wind protection and so much more. Often overlooked and thought of only in timber terms, there are multiple ways to create income from a small woodlot beyond selling saw logs. Read on and get the most from your wooded acres — be it for pasturing pigs or harvesting the occasional whitetail deer.
Pasturing pigs
If your woodlot is loaded with briars, vines and overgrown understory, pasturing pigs will help clear the mess out so grasses or more beneficial trees and plants can be propagated. We pasture about four pigs per acre of woods, but with more grain and the right soil conditions, you can seasonally keep up to 25 pigs per acre, depending on breed size and other variables. Or if you have a sufficient area of mixed eastern hardwoods, you can let one pig roam three to four acres all summer and feed very little grain. Folks lucky enough to have an orchard (or one nearby) might consider allowing the pigs to keep the orchard grounds free of windfalls.Grazing other livestock
While pigs are an excellent option because they root and clear space, woodlands can be grazed by any livestock. Goats and cattle are excellent options. Goats can be used to clear out growth that other animals won’t eat. Some breeds of cattle are better at eating the shrubs and such than others; our Dexter cattle will eat just about anything a goat would consume.Grazing your woodland will give you more pasture, and you should be able to market your beef, goat meat and offspring locally. Pastured meat production commands a higher price in most cases. Laws vary by state for selling meat, so be sure to check the rules and regulations for meat inspection.
Understory crops
With no animals grazing, a diversity of plants can be cultivated in the understory of forests. In the more southern reaches of the United States, one might consider planting galax, ginseng, tea trees, or other medicinal plants. Decorative native shrubs such as azaleas or rhododendrons can also be grown and sold to homeowners or nurseries for landscaping use.Ginseng is by far the highest paying understory plant, but it takes about six years to reach a marketable size. It requires a north-facing slope for optimal production. However, ginseng’s growing environment can be simulated. This plant grows wild as far west as the edge of Nebraska and as far north as Maine. You can grow ginseng by purchasing stratified seed or rootlets. Some farms offer starter packages for growers that include rootlets and seeds.
Tea trees are an excellent understory plant. Leaves can be harvested for green tea, pressed into tea tree oil — a common ingredient in many of the healthier cosmetics and cleansers — or cured for black tea. Processing tea is easy to do at home.There are many varieties of tea trees available, just make sure the variety you are getting is suited to your U.S. Department of Agriculture growing zone. Tea can be grown as far north as Delaware, or USDA Zone 6B. With the popularity and price of coffee and tea continually rising, growing your own tea can save a lot of money over the years, and you can sell cured teas.
Firewood
Dead or dying trees can often be more useful as firewood. Leaving a few standing dead trees to provide wildlife habitat makes sense for encouraging beauty through wildlife and a more diverse set of woods. But, if you don’t see any foliage on a tree, it’s best to make a decision as soon as you can as to what to do with the tree — weak or diseased trees can be more vulnerable to pests and parasites; diseased trees can also pose a health risk to other trees in your woods. If a tree stands for long enough, it will rot, so it’s often best to cut it down and stack it up for firewood as soon as you notice it is dead. Firewood can provide an occasional windfall throughout the year. If a tree gets blown over in your forest, cut it into firewood. Good firewood is worth more than $100 a cord, and several folks in rural America make a significant supplemental income selling it.The quality of different types of wood will be region-specific, but typically Osage orange (if you’re in the Great Plains), red and white oak, hickory, ash and hard maples are among the best in terms of British thermal units (BTU — our measurement for quantifying the heat value of fuel). However, a type of wood with a lower BTU rating isn’t all bad and will still sell — for instance, hackberry doesn’t burn as hot, but some folks would rather cut, split and burn it over Osage orange simply because it’s easier to work with. Consider what wood you have, and then see how it ranks and how it’s priced in your area. You’ll also most likely need to season it for at least a year before selling it for the highest price.
Mushroom cultivation
Growing mushrooms is another way to use dead or dying trees. Many options are available depending on your climate. Perhaps the most commonly cultivated mushroom in woodlots is the shiitake. The shiitake grows best in hardwood, particularly oak. On our farm, we have found that thicker-barked oaks work best, but any oak is an outstanding medium for shiitake cultivation. In the Western states, one might consider growing chicken of the woods on Douglas fir. A thinning of stunted or otherwise inferior trees for mushroom cultivation material might help open up your woodland for better grazing or any of the other possible understory uses.Mushroom cultivation can be started with a small investment. A bag of shiitake sawdust spawn costs $19 to $25 and will inoculate approximately 25 logs averaging 4 feet in length and 4 inches in diameter. You will need an inoculation tool and a drill bit when using sawdust spawn, but the cost is well worth it if you plan on inoculating more than 100 logs in the near future. Logs can be left leaning against other trees in the understory after inoculation. If you have poplar or other softer woods, oyster mushrooms are another option. Logs are usually inoculated as they would be for shiitake.There are also other methods for cultivating oysters, such as cutting out wedges in logs, stuffing the empty space with spawn and nailing the wedge back in. The totem method is another option. This is simply cutting two sections of log approximately 18 inches long, packing spawn on top of the log that is sitting up and placing the other round on top of it. Generally the top is secured with several long screws or nails. After the incubation period, mushrooms will start growing where the two wood rounds meet.
If you are cutting down larger trees, the remaining stumps can be inoculated as well. There is a product that bears mentioning called MycoSpored Oils. This oil is used in a chainsaw in place of bar oil, inoculating wood; you inoculate everything you cut with the saw. This is a convenient and economical way to grow mushrooms and also to decompose stumps in your woodland. Just be sure to order the formula that is right for the type of woodland you have.
General woodlot and game management
Many people are interested in managing their woodland for game. Deer prefer open understories or meadows near the edge of forests, as well as farmland — especially corn, alfalfa or soybean fields. You might create a forest management plan including the following steps:1. If the woodlot is very overgrown, consider pasturing pigs on it. The pigs will root up the understory, helping fertilize and aerate it. This makes perfect conditions for planting a forage crop in the understory, called a food plot.
2. Plant a good understory grass such as ryegrass or any good shade blend mixture.
3. Consider thinning out larger trees if your forest seems overcrowded. It is better to have two or three healthy, mast-producing trees rather than half a dozen stunted, poorly producing trees. Cutting down low-quality trees with many limbs is a great way to add a bunch of firewood and help the development of your timber lot.
Leasing hunting rights
If you have woodland that is sufficiently remote, you might consider leasing out hunting rights. There are plenty of hunters who will pay for the right to hunt your land. Paperwork should be drawn up to protect you from liability, specify the length of the lease, and so any rules and regulations you stipulate are understood. I would recommend leasing on a year-to-year basis. A long lease agreement can cause problems if you ever want to sell the property or use it for a different purpose.Leasing hunting ground is becoming popular, and it can provide significant supplemental income, at the price of friends or strangers gaining access to your land and the animals on it.
As time goes by
The improvements you’ll see in your woodland might seem subtle at first, but over a few years, an overgrown woodlot can undergo dramatic improvements. Part of this, like so much, depends greatly on how much you put into it. Grazing pigs or other animals through your woodland will help better forage come back in the understory, but it will happen a lot sooner if you invest in some good shade grass seed. The type of grass in such mixtures will vary depending on your growing zone. You might be able to save money by mixing your own grass mixture for planting. Buying a pound or two each time you go to the feed or hardware store will make a dramatic difference over the years.These are by no means the only ways to make money from your woodland, but they are some of the more realistic options for the woodlot owner who is working with a smaller budget. For those able to invest the money and who live in a suitable area, building a few rustic cabins to rent seasonally might also be an option, or some other form of agritourism to draw folks out your way. Whatever you choose, just know that those trees on your property are worth much more than the wood they produce.Read more: Check the BTUs of the woods on your land with our firewood rating chart, Find the Best Firewood for You.
Samantha Biggers is a writer and farmer based in the western North Carolina mountains. She writes from Biggers’ Farm, a 15-acre mountain farm, where she and her husband raise registered Dexter cattle, pastured poultry, goats, mushrooms, and more. You can read more from Samantha on her blog, Biggers Farm.
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