permaculture

["Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>]

The proper wood for kacheloffens or mass heaters is faggots.  We are self
sufficient with the self pruned wood from our elm and black locust with some
additional wood from our orchard pruning.  A good masonry stove is 90+%
efficient in btu conversion and one can become self sufficient for space
heating and a large part of cooking energy by using these appliances.  This
is our back up for passive solar and it works great.  Two bundles of faggots
per day keeps everything cozy and provides baked bread and crock pot
cuisine. 

There is a critical danger in saying "never do..." about anything there are
always exceptions. 

Scott Pittman
Director
Permaculture Institute
www.permaculture.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Healing Hawk [mailto:healinghawk@earthlink.net] 
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 11:15 PM
To: 'permaculture'
Subject: Re: [permaculture] small cooking woodstove

What did Mollison say about wood heat?  An ancestor said that when the white
man cuts the last tree, he's going to find out that he can't eat his money.
Trees are nothing but money on the stump, at best, in market society.
Mollison realizes how hard it is to loose the anthropomorphic orientation of
the "self-regulating" market.  

What Scott describes is a symbiotic relationship with the woodlot where he
lives.  He takes out diseased and dying trees so the rest can live better,
even if it's so he can keep on exploiting them.  Ecological damage is
minimal.  Life's balance is maintained.  This is not what I'm saying don't
do, even though I would not do this.  Mollison would, I think, bless this
approach that Scott describes.  Scott doesn't describe The American Way.  

In Austin, we have people cutting heritage trees that were here before
Austin so they can fit McMansions on the lots.  It's a two thousand dollar
fine if they're caught.  Most aren't.  Fireplaces are a big sales item here.
I'd guess more than half the apartments here have them.  Where are their
woodlots?  Where are their coppicing skills?  We have such mild winters that
passive solar doesn't pass the supreme test - it doesn't "pay off" soon
enough, economically.  So a few weird architects build passive solar homes
for themselves, and that's all of them there are.  "Green building" doesn't
usually mean passive solar here.

There are few if any places in California that get as cold for as long as
Maine, and there is green power available nearly everywhere in California.
The original post was from California.  I observed plenty of roofs in the
Bay Area (a Mediterranean climate) with a plume of wood smoke above them on
temperate nights.  Where are their woodlots?  Where are their coppicing
skills?  

As a general rule, don't cut trees or use products that cause them to be
cut.  If you use wood products, follow Scot's example to do it sustainably.
If you can't do it sustainably, don't do it.  Design lifestyles such that
your presence here does not restrain Gaia from producing the profit with
which she nurtures the future.  Trees are far more ecologically useful than
you.  Hell, unless you're a highly unusual US citizen, pond scum is more
ecologically useful than you because you don't know who you are or why
you're here and it's not in the free market's interest to have you find out.
Leave the trees for the future.  Find another way to get comfortable.
That's why you were given the capacity to evolve.  Evolve, and leave a
planetary life support system for those yet to come.  Trees are an essential
component of that life support system.  You aren't.        

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX