Forestry/Heating with Wood

Almost half of our 135 acre farm is in woods – we like it that way. A few benefits of having our own woods/forest:

* they provide us with firewood

* we harvest logs to be sawed into lumber for our construction needs

* they are good habitat for wildlife (including deer – currently, our primary source of meat)

* they are a carbon sink – offsetting global warming

* they nurture the spirit/soul – winter time is my favorite time to be in the woods: walking, skiing, cutting firewood. The woods feel like a sanctuary (comparable to church/temple for some) to me – it’s where I feel connected to nature, the universe – my spirit feels nurtured.

It feels appropriate for us to heat with wood: currently, we heat two residences, a common house/kitchen, and a green house. That’s a lot of fires to keep feeding; on these sub zero nights, we burn a lot of wood; additionally, we use wood to cook down our sorghum and maple syrup. How much wood? I don’t know – I’m not in the mindset of thinking in terms of cords, etc. Of course, there is the old adage: firewood warms you twice: when you cut & split it and when you burn it. We like the cozyness of wood stoves – coming in from the outside, it feels so good to toast myself in front of the wood stove.

The photo show us about to go off to the woods to cut firewood. Our 3 dogs always come with us, although once we start the chainsaws, they go off on their own adventures.
Sustainability? We have more wood in our forests now than 30 years ago – the trees are growing much faster than what we use for lumber and fire wood – so it appears a sustainable practice. Two years ago, for the first time, we cut logs to sell to a local saw mill – primarily because a lot of trees died due to “Red Oak decline” (for more on this, see Missouri Dept of Conservation literature – it is a widespread disease). We simply could not use the wood fast enough; further, we reasoned that it is consistent with our lifestyle and values. We sell products from plants that we grow intentionally (garden and field crops) – so why not sell from the wooded part of our land as well? As with the crops we harvest, we sell only the “extra” – that is, what we don’t consume.

For us, forestry/wood heat is an integral part of the “good life.”