Market Farming

[Beth Spaugh <eas9 AT cornell.edu>]

Have a friend who is a dairy farmer and vegetable farmer. He installed an 
outdoor wood furnace to heat water for the dairy, uses it to heat his 14 x 
96 seed-starting hoophouse. Works great. He has tubing run under the 
benches. For me the key to his use of woodheat this way is that he is 
already burning the wood, and some of the heat would go to waste, so this 
is an efficient use of the wood. He has a woodlot he expected to use, but 
also a neighbor who is a tree trimmer and provides all the wood he needs 
already cut in 4 foot lengths (or shorter for thick logs). Boy, if I had a 
setup like that I'd go with a wood furnace in a heartbeat. But, I would 
have to buy wood. We do have a woods, but we are not good about cutting 
lots of wood ahead of time.


At 06:21 PM 1/6/2005 -0500, you wrote:

> >     On another note what do you folks think of useing one of those
> > outdoor wood furnaces to heat a green house or high tunnel?
>
>
> I will tell you shortly.  I have a new wood gasification boiler (much more 
> efficient that your run of the mill outdoor wood furnace) that I'm back 
> fitting into our farmhouse  and going to run pipe for heating the 
> greenhouse.  My idea (I have a month to get it done) is to run the pipes 
> on the tables instead of heat mats. Also put pipes in the ground for 
> heating the entire greenhouse  (30X96).  Currently I have a big modine 
> heating the thing but that gets expensive and for me, wood is free.
>
> (I used to use a woodstove to heat the greenhouse but as someone on this 
> list pointed out at the time, that is sure a lot of work getting up in the 
> middle of cold nights to feed the fires).
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Beth Spaugh
Rehoboth Homestead
66 Jabez Allen Road
Peru NY 12972