Tree Research

I’ve done some looking around, here’s some good info on using your land for firewood. Most of it’s in PDFs, curses, Adobe…

• This one and this one both have charts for calculating the amount of cord wood you can get out of a tree by measuring its diameter. A tree with a 22″ diameter at 4.5′ high will provide a full cord of firewood. We’ve got a good few trees are are about that big, and some larger. Obviously we don’t want to just cut all these granddaddies down for firewood. There seems to be enough for a few years worth in standing dead and unhealthy ones though.
• This one has good info about how much wood you can expect to get out of a given bit of property. It seems that we’d need ten acres of regular forest to get enough wood to heat our house. It says we could do it on as little as two acres but the trees would need to be eight feet apart, that’s pretty close.
• Not necessarily about firewood, but I found this site about the Emerald Ash Borer. I’ve definitely seen these grubs while splitting wood. I’ve have to read more on what to do about them…

The Managing Your Woodlot for Firewood PDF I linked above had some great advice on tending to a forest; how to tell good trees from bad, how close you should leave them together, how close you should plant new ones… I spent a fair bit of time outside this weekend, thinking about what should go and what should stay. Like I said above, we should have enough wood for a few years just cleaning up the old crooked and diseased trees and making room for the healthier and younger one. I also found Indiana’s DNR website. They’ve got a seedling program, where we can get young trees of all types to plant in the back field.