The Woodland Homestead: How to Make Your Land More Productive and Live More Self-Sufficiently in the Woods
(eBook)

Put your wooded land to work! This comprehensive manual shows you how to use your woodlands to produce everything from wine and mushrooms to firewood and livestock feed. You'll learn how to take stock of your woods; use axes, bow saws, chainsaws, and other key tools; create pasture and silvopasture for livestock; prune and coppice trees to make fuel, fodder, and furniture; build living fencing and shelters for animals; grow fruit trees and berries in a woodland orchard; make syrup from birch, walnut, or boxelder trees; and much more. Whether your property is entirely or only partly wooded, this is the guide you need to make the best use of it. From shelter to food to fuel and more, "The Woodland Homestead" gives you all the tools and information you need to sustainably use your woodlot to its fullest potential. Foreword Preface Chapter 1: Seeing the Forest Through the Trees: How to Unlock Your Woodlot's Potential - Taking Stock - Evaluating Your Options - Your Woodland Eye Chapter 2: Tools and Techniques: Essentials for the Homestead Woodlot - The Axe - From Rusty to Trusty: Restoring an Old Axe - Felling and Chopping - The Peavey - The Bow Saw - The Chainsaw - Splitting Firewood - Skidding Logs - The Portable Sawmill Chapter 3: Animals in the Forest: From Stumps to Greener Pastures - Silvopasture - The Closed-Loop Silvopasture Sequence - Pork Power for Stumps and Soil - Taking Stock of Livestock - Multispecies Grazing Chapter 4: The Coppice Forest: Fauna, Fodder, Fuel and Furniture - A Brief History of Coppice Forestry - Establishing a Coppice Woodlot - Creative Woodlot Tending - Coppice with Standards - Fauna in Your Forest - Coppicing for Fodder - Coppicing for Charcoal - Forest Furniture Chapter 5: Woodland Structures: From Living Fence to Living Barn - Fencing Psychology - A Short History of Living Fences - Living Fence for the Homestead - Inosculation Hedges - The Living Fencepost - Formerly Living Fenceposts - Building with Stumps - Shelterbelts - The Living Barn Chapter 6: Giving Trees: Fruit, Honey, and Syrup - The Homestead Orchard - Deciding What to Grow - The Multipurpose Forest Micro-Orchard - The Art of Planting - Resurrecting the Woodland Orchard - Bees in the Woodland Homestead - Cellar and Cider: Enjoying the Harvest - The Homestead Sugarbush Chapter 7: Farming The Forest Floor: Nuts, Berries, Mushrooms, and More - Hugelkulter: A Whole-Tree Composting System - Cultivating Forest Edibles - Edibles, Medicinals, and Miscellany - Baskets, Burls, and Birch Bark A Typical Woodland Homestead Calendar Resources Index