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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

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Date:   Mon, 23 Mar 1998 15:07:21 -0500
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From: tvoivozd <tvoivozd AT roanoke.infi.net>
To: "homestead AT listserv.oit.unc.edu" <homestead AT listserv.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Trashland Treasure for Hillbillys and HillTillys)
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Here's why you should consider cheap trashland for your unconventional
homestead..

Conventional agriculture in the U.S. has always been tied to quick
return, not low-input
agriculture, and not sustainability---which in the long-term is the most
profitable.

This is not surprising in view of the fact that banks want the mortgage
payment on the first of
every month, the county treasurer has his hand out every six months, and
the IRS is quite insistent about being paid quarterly.

If you look around you will see a great disparity in price between land
that will yield a quick
return for conventional agriculture and that which will not.  In the
mid-Appalachians, flat, fertile
farmland ranges from $1000 to $3000 per acre, steep valley and ridgeland
$300 to $500 on
average---sometimes below $100 per acre.

You don't have the kind of loot it takes to buy a gentleman farm or even
one of the few remaining working farms. How can this discouraging
picture be turned to advantage?

Think unconventional.  Think long-term.  Think about the sylvan
agriculture of the Roman Empire, the Cedars of Lebanon, the olive groves
of Greece and Italy, the acorn and chestnut forests of Spain---all of
which would qualify for the description of trashland today with the
mature forests replaced by less valuable second-growth vegetation.

If you buy much flatland for your homestead, it takes a heavy investment
in land, a heavy annual
expenditure for taxes, fuel, repairs, seed, fertilizer, pest control,
crop storage and a heavy investment in heavy metal to make it pay---two
hundred thousand dollars or more in farm machinery is fairly
common---machines that are idle half the year.

Land unsuitable for machine cultivation is relatively cheap.  Carefully
chosen and attended to,
such land can provide all the materials for homestead buildings, (clay,
sand, stone and wood),
plus the means of fairly quickly paying off the purchase price, while
making room for the future
maintenance-free chestnut/walnut/hazelnut trees (no olives here) and
hog-harvesters that were the heart of Appalachian agroforestry a century
past, in the same fashion as the acorn/hog symbiosis
once ruled in the forests of Spain and Britain.

While you won't be buying any virgin forests within reach of your
ability to pay, and you won't be
competing with professional loggers for land where two-foot diameter
second-growth trees are a
majority, still it is rare (and to be avoided) where there is not $1000
or more per acre (at
builder's cost) of  sawn lumber lumber there for the taking  from land
costing less than $500 per
acre.

Because it is so little in demand, this type of land (usually with
desirable springs and creeks as
water-supply, irrigation and aquaculture potential---sometimes
hydropower) can be purchased as owner-financed, with small down-payment
and low interest.  If you want to experiment on a
small-scale, with the certainty of being able to expand---or if your
motivation is to start with
absolute minimum capital, you would buy a small tract and pay for an
option to buy adjacent land at the same or the lesser price per acre
commanded by a larger purchase.

One thing you cannot dispense with before purchase is a survey.  The
consequences of cutting trees on someone elses land is so severe that it
is to be avoided at all cost.  When surveying don't follow the common
practice of  cemented pipe cornerposts only, with flimsy wood stakes at
intervening intervals that quickly disappear.  The benefit of of
pipe-stakes every hundred yards (flagged with surveyor's tape) is worth
ten times the added expense.

To take advantage of this income potential, you of course have to be the
feller, the hauler, the
sawyer, the stacker and seller of rough-sawn air-dried (and perhaps
kiln-dried, planed) lumber.  You aren't going to be a big operator, and
you don't need to be to fulfill your homestead building and secondary
income needs---nor is part-time work of this nature incompatible with
your job in a nearby town.

Your product is and will remain in high demand.  The price of wood is
slowly but steadily
increasing and except for brief blips in response to mortgage interest
rates, will never go down in
your lifetime. If you want to add extra value, and build a workshop, a
part of your sawn lumber
or unsawn treetops  can be turned into regular or log-furniture, bowls,
barrels or other craft
articles of your choice.

It's hard work, and (this cannot be over-emphasized) it is dangerous
work felling trees with a
chainsaw.  I regard life insurance and accident insurance including loss
of income as absolutely essential to logging.  A lot of people now
totally dependent upon charity thought otherwise or didn't think about
it at all..

Snaking the logs out of the woods requires at least a horse (maybe two),
a homemade
vee-shaped skidder and log-chain, or inverted "U"-shaped two-wheel or
four-wheel trailer.  A
tractor with a winch and claw-loader will do the same job faster, but
require some roadbuilding
and do more collateral damage to tender young and potentially valuable
trees.

You will need a creek and high-pressure pump to debark and/or clean
muddy logs---a chainsaw
debarker attachment, ice-chisel or axe will do as well at the cost of
extra labor.

And you will need a bandsaw mill.  To start with, a homemade mill
costing a few hundred dollars
could suffice.  For serious, long-term work an easier-handling, more
productive commercial mill
like the WoodMizer or Timber King would be the second-stage
choice---first-stage if you have
enough capital to start with.

So back to reexamine the ranch.

The cheapest homestead land has no buildings upon it, and if you buy it
you will initially live in a travel trailer, tent or hastily thrown-up
log-shelter.  There will be little if any flatland and you might have to
make some for your garden with a bulldozer---if so, do it when you
bulldoze your road.

Don't even think about trying to make a road by other means, especially
when protruding rock is involved.  There will be lots of compost
material (leaves) for the garden.

Two caveats---don't buy land without running water on it, and don't
build on a hillside that will move downhill with wet weather or
earthquake.

And first things first---a lot of research and planning should precede
the purchase of land or
equipment if this approach to homesteading seems to fulfill your needs.

Start here at this URL and take it as far as is necessary or desirable
(there are many other similar
sites you should explore). http://www.missouri.edu/~afta/

Topographic charts and other maps showing watercourses, elevations,
steepness of terrain, type
and quality of soil, rainfall, roads, distance to employment and markets
for your products
all should be elements of your search.

In these particular archives you will find articles on growing ginseng,
alley cropping between Paulownia trees, cost-sharing for conservation
forestry, twenty years of growing commercial black walnut in Missouri,
the new timber opportunity in fast-growing Leyland cypress, the
potential of pawpaws, silvapasture in Wisconsin dairyland, the tree-farm
of Joel Salatin (which supports and supplements the many other
farm-marketing activities of his Swope, Virginia farm)---together with
many other topics relating to agroforestry in temperate climates.














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Bevanron of EarthNSky Farm   Sleep well tonight, for somewhere in the 
ocean's depths, MY son is protecting YOUR freedom.