The Woodland Homestead

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.

  Brett McLeod is the author of American Axe and The Woodland Homestead and an avid axe collector and restorer. Before becoming a forestry professor and coach of the woodsmen's team at Paul Smith's College in the Adirondack Park, he was a professional competitive lumberjack in the Stihl Ironjack Series and competed in the Stihl Timbersports Collegiate Series. He lives in northern New York with his wife and his collection of 200 vintage axes. A wooded property -- even just a small one -- is full of possibilities for sustainable use. Whether your goal is to grow food, harvest wood, or support livestock, forester and homesteader Brett McLeod has the knowledge, tools, and techniques you need to get the most out of your land. You'll learn how to take stock of the forest makeup, use different axes and saws, prune and coppice trees, grow fruit and berries, build living fences, and much more. Along the way, you'll read the stories of other homesteaders who, through innovation and resourcefulness, have realized their dreams of a bountiful woodland home. Foreword

Preface



Chapter 1: Seeing the Forest Through the Trees: How to Unlock Your Woodlot's Potential
• Taking Stock
• Evaluating Your Options
• Your Woodland EyeChapter 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 SawmillChapter 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 GrazingChapter 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 FurnitureChapter 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 SugarbushChapter 7: Farming The Forest Floo:  Nuts, Berries, Mushrooms, and More
• Hugelkulter: A Whole-Tree Composting System
• Cultivating Forest Edibles
• Edibles, Medicinals, and Miscellany
• Baskets, Burls, and Birch BarkA Typical Woodland Homestead Calendar

Resources

Index

"When you start reading The Woodland Homestead, you'll learn how to think about your woodland not only as an ecosystem but also as an 'ecology of possibilities'."

- from the fore