The Lay of the Land

[cathleeninnh]

Someone told me that 17 acres in NH will provide enough wood to heat 4 rooms +/- and support approximately 2-6 people. That is based on cutting 10-15 year old hardwoods and little evergreen.

Anyone else done any research? Is there an estimate of cleared land necessary to raise minimal crops and livestock?

Cathleen

[AlanM]

I read somewhere once that you can take a cord per acre per year of wood in a sustainable harvest forest.

[AlanM]

Here is a link to an on-line book from 1866 called Ten Acres Enough
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;cc=moa;view=toc;idno=AJR0739.0001.001

Warning: The title page does not work. Go to the index. It comes up.

[cathleeninnh]

I read somewhere once that you can take a cord per acre per year of wood in a sustainable harvest forest.

Never having heated with wood, I don't know how many cords are used in a NH winter to heat how many feet of living space?

Cathleen

[Kat Kanning]

We heated our not-too-sealed mobile home with 4 cords last winter, but it was a mild winter and we used a little gas.  A little bigger house with also bad insulation used 6 cords.

[AlanM]

I read somewhere once that you can take a cord per acre per year of wood in a sustainable harvest forest.

Never having heated with wood, I don't know how many cords are used in a NH winter to heat how many feet of living space?

Cathleen

Cathleen, I had an 8 room Victorian, poorly insulated, which took me 13 cords to heat in the coldest winter I encountered. (It was -25 on Christmas day. Never got above 0 for a month.)

[FrankChodorov]

I heated (& hot water) the 3000 sqft passive solar super-insulated house I designed, GC and built on Lake Sunapee for less than $500 of propane 5 years ago.

during the ice storm I was forced out of my house for a week and the temp. inside the house never got below 55 degrees with no electricty or heat on in the house.

[cathleeninnh]

Here is a link to an on-line book from 1866 called Ten Acres Enough
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;cc=moa;view=toc;idno=AJR0739.0001.001

Warning: The title page does not work. Go to the index. It comes up.

Started browsing randomly and got hooked.

From page 243:

"It was the determined will of our forefathers to which, with divine help, we are principally indebted for our freedom. For the first few years after the declaration of independence, we lost most of the battles that were fought. New York and Philladelphia were successively captured by the foe; South Carolina fell; New Jersey was practically reannexed to England; almost everything went against us. Had the American people been feeble and hesitating, all would have been lost. But they resolved to conquer or die. Though their cities were taken, their fields ravaged, and their captured soldiers incarcerated in hideous prison-ships, they still maintained the struggle, making the pilgrimage of freedom with naked feet, that bled at every step. Had our fathers been incapable of Valley Forge, had they shrunk from the storm-beaten march on Trenton, we should never have been an independent nation. There are people in the Old World, full of genius and enthusiasm for liberty, who yet cannot achieve freedom, principally, perhaps, because they lack the indomitable will to walk the bloody pilgrimage."

Cathleen

[Russell Kanning]

Building the house better .... seems like the best way to survive.