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on April 15
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #47Starting 'Phase 3'
Hello friends
Happy spring! (Mark here) It's an incredibly gorgeous day here in Burlington and I hope you find something similar wherever you may be. Things are starting to ramp up here as the weather grows ever nicer and it seemed a good time to share an update as to where things are at in our process.
Last week I printed the manuscript for the first time (at least for myself - Dave's done it once before). It contains 10 chapters, 180,000 words (nearly 300 pages single spaced) so there's no shortage of content - but we want to make sure that the content that's there is as potent, relevant, accurate and practical as can be so I've begun what will likely amount to a serious amount of harsh editing. I feel as if I've entered 'phase 3' of a three part manuscript development process.
The first phase involved writing everything I felt I knew or could offer our original outline framework. Then I've spent the last 7 or so months reading and integrating over 50 related books into that manuscript. Now, I'm going through what I've written, pruning, consolidating, clarifying, and further identifying areas that need fleshing out. This step will take some time as I'm concurrently going through our extensive list of academic journal resources, seeing what they have to offer and fitting them into the manuscript as appropriate. It's exciting to see individual chapters starting to take their true form.
At the moment, I'm refining Chapter 1 - A Cultural History of Coppice Agroforestry and it has me reading some fascinating research. I've included some photos that show the articles I'm currently diving into, an awkward photo of me with the manuscript (it's hard to take a decent photo of yourself), and a sampling of the hard edits I've been undertaking on the manuscript to date (yes, that's right I've graded myself - A+ - no, just kidding, I was using letters and numbers to indicate where to place different sections as I rearrange things).
I hope this helps you all feel connected with our process. It's been an involved one. No one said it would be easy (or fast) and that's absolutely proving to be the case, but I can say that I find myself still thoroughly enjoying the process, learning new things every day, and feeling a deep appreciation and a humble drive to serve you all as best I/we can.
Thanks again for all you do!
Best wishes
Mark and Dave
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on March 19
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
backed a project
Eight Extraordinary Greens by Jenna Spevack
A participatory exhibition to support urban agriculture and explore the value placed on food and society.
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114% funded $3,446 pledged
- 111 backers
- Funded Apr 01, 2012
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on March 1
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #46March Update
Hello folksPost CommentWarm winter greetings from a snowy Vermont. We hope this message finds you all very well, and we're happy to share more details about our progress on the book. I recently 'completed' a milestone in the process, having integrated detailed notes (230 pages worth) from nearly 40 books I poured through during the past 4 months into our still-expanding manuscript. I included a photo of the stack (of books) in a previous update, but it included resources on traditional crafts, plant physiology, masonry heater technology, indigenous building techniques, coppice management and ecology, forestry and folklore. It proved to be a very involved process but I think it will pay off greatly in rounding out our resource and making it as comprehensive as we can.I'm about to segue into the next phase in the writing process, reading through the manuscript, editing and refining and identifying gaps. From there, I plan to start to utilize the extensive literature database Dave has created along with a few volunteers to help root our findings in existing research. It's another big step, but we're confident it will help make our end product that much more robust.In the mean time, Dave and our super-diligent, hard working friend Daniel Plane have been fleshing out the species database and are beginning to take steps towards refining the categories we'll ultimately include in the listings in the finished book. Including over 700 native, naturalized or otherwise useful woody plants that can be managed using coppicing and pollarding, we ought to have the most useful, comprehensive and intentional resource on the best-suited plants for this type of management.I've got more updates in the works soon - namely reflections on our recent workshop/workday/'copp-mob' at the Sawyer homestead in Woodbury, VT where we initiated a coppice rotation amongst a 3/4 acre stand of red maple. It was a great day and remarkably impressive to see what a team of 15+ people could do in only a few short hours!Well wishes from us as your winter proceeds!Keep up the great work I'm sure you're all doing.With appreciationMark
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on February 16
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #45Free Hands-on Coppice Establishment and Conversion Workshop
Post CommentHi friends
Just wanted to let you know about this upcoming event Mark has scheduled in Woodbury, VT. We're excited to initiate a new coppice stand at the Sawyer family homestead. Space is limited so let us know if you'd like to attend - contact details below.
Saturday 2/25 - 10-4:30
The Sawyer Homestead, 556 King Pond Road, Woodbury Vermontwith free public talk to follow from 6-7:30 at All Together Now - 170 Cherry Tree Hill Road, East Montpelier,VTJoin Mark Krawczyk (co-author of the forthcoming Coppice Agroforestry manual) and siblings Annie and George Sawyer at the beautiful Sawyer homestead in Woodbury, VT for a free, hands-on coppice conversion workshop Saturday February 25th. During this daylong workshop we'll begin to implement a management plan for a 7 year, rotational coppice woodlot, converting an existing 15 or so year old stand of red maple into a multi-purpose, polewood-producing forest stand. We'll spend the day felling polewood, limbing the produce, exploring potential value-adding opportunities, thinking about and discussing the design and layout of coppice systems, learning how to use a number of different traditional tools and techniques and have an opportunity to view the workshop of Dave Sawyer, master windsor chairmaker.This is a unique opportunity to participate in the development of a new expression of an ancient forestry system with lots of potential to help support and manifest homestead fuel and craft wood security on a small scale. We'll all likely learn something new about woodland management, value-adding processes, ecological design, and effective, efficient group work.Dress warm as we'll be working outside all day. If you have hand saws, a bill hook, loppers and clippers, or an ax, please bring. Bring a lunch (there will be some soup and bread) and we'll have hot beverages on hand along with plenty of core-warming work to keep you busy.Space is limited for this event so please contact us if you intend to come. Also, because the weather is difficult to project, we want to be sure we have your contact information in the case of inclement weather and a need to reschedule. For more information, e-mail Mark Krawczyk at keylinevermont [at] gmail.com or 802-999-2768.Best wishes and happy felling! -
on January 8
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #44European Wood Pasture (Silvopasture) Case Studies
Post CommentI've recently been re-reading and integrating some great historical ecological research on European woodlands into our manuscript and thought that the following two case studies might be of interest to our friends and kickstarter backers. There's some great detailed information in the profiles below which should prove invaluable towards helping us clearly design fodder based livestock systems here in North America.
Enjoy!MarkCase Studies - Traditional European Wood Pastures
Ribaritsa, Bulgaria
The Bulgarian village of Ribaritsa, 10 km southeast of Teteven and 80 km east of Sophia, encompasses both level lowlands and steep slopes stretching 1970-2300’ (600-700m) above sea level. Enjoying a frost free period from mid to late April through late October, the lowest winter temperatures reach about 10℉ (-11℃). Receiving an annual average of 38.7” (982mm) precipitation, the highest monthly totals fall between April and early August, tapering off through the late summer and winter months. In this area, pollarded trees border many of village’s diverse dry meadows dominated by the perennial bunchgrass Chrysopogon gryllus. In July, farmers typically cut hay with scythes. In many Bulgarian pollard meadows, farmers give sheep and goats access to grass and browse both before and during hay making.
The annual hay yield varies depending on the precipitation. Meadows average about 4,400 lbs (2000 kg) dry hay per hectare, though in productive years, it’s possible to manage two hay harvests, and yields may reach as much as 11,000 lbs (5000 kg) dry hay per hectare. Except for the ‘collective farm period’ (post World War II though the late 1980s) when meadows were fertilized with up to 175 lbs of N and P fertilizer per acre (440 lbs or 200 kg per hectare), the only fertilizer farmers apply comes in the form of manure.
Farmers actually only pollard trees during dry seasons, when the hay harvest falls short of their needs. From mid-July through September’s end farmers harvest leaf fodder from hedge maple (Acer campestre), Norway maple (A. Platinoides), hornbeam (Carpins betulus), oriental hornbeam (C. orientalis), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), black mulberry (Morus nigra), oak (Quercus spp. - except for Q. cerris which is the animals do not eat), white willow (Salix alba), large leaved linden (Tilia platyphyllos) and elm (Ulmus spp.). Only in years of severe feed shortage do they use European beech (Fagus sylvatica), while black alder (Alnus glutinosa) remains even less common. They collect the nuts from hazel (Corylus avellana) and use the leaves medicinally to treat prostate problems and kidney disease in humans.
Typically harvesting fodder on a 3-4 year rotation, farmers climb the pollards, severing leafy twigs 3.3-5’ (1-1.5m) long with an axe and piling them for later bundling. They tie bundles with a branch of the same tree or twigs of Salix alba or Clematis vitalba. They store these bundles, or leaf sheathes in a barn or on a platform raised 6.6-9.8’ (2-3m) heigh spanning between 2 trees. Two workers can harvest 141 ft3 (4 m3 or 5.2 yd3) worth of fodder a day. Unless annual hay yields fall well short of needs, farmers in Ribaritsa only feed leaf fodder to goats, providing cows, sheep, horses, mules and donkeys with hay. On average one sheep or goat requires about 220 lbs (100 kg) dry hay or 35 ft3 (1 m3) leaf fodder per winter.
Valdagno, Vicenza, Italy
Here we present a summarized case study of Elena Bargioni and Alessandra Zanzi Sulli’s article “The Production of Fodder Trees in Valdagno, Vicenza, Italy” from The Ecological History of European Woodlands edited by Keith Kirby and Charles Watkins. Their article offers a detailed look at the management of a small livestock farm in the Agno Valley of northeastern Italy. With a humid subcontinental climate and 58.6” (1489 mm) mean annual precipitation, the area experiences long, cold winters and hot summers with a broad annual temperature range. Located along the Agno River at an altitude of 2635’ (800 m) in the village of Castelvecchio, the farm’s soils derive from basalt bedrock and the steep slopes are prone to frequent landslides.
The aspect of the farm’s various plots have clearly informed their use. Southeast-facing slopes were tilled, while meadows occupied the those aspects possessing less fertility, poor drainage and colder microclimates. The wood pastures and woodlands were largely relegated to the northwestern slopes.
From the 1920s until 1992, the farm produced 1/3 of their annual fodder needs from managed pollards. Mainly comprised of ash (Fraxinus excelsior), but also including black alder (Alnus glutinosa), black poplar, (Populus nigra) cherry (Prunus spp.), maple (Acer spp.) and elm (Ulmus spp.), most trees were managed for fodder production with pollards distributed throughout the pasture either singly, in groups or in rows.
Both individual trees and groups of trees usually lie scattered throughout pastures, whereas tree rows form property boundaries or divide tracts of land receiving different types of management. These rows of pollards with shrubs interspersed underneath offer the highest aerial productivity while occupying the least amount of space. The rows consist of ash pollards cut at 15-16.5’ (4.5-5 m) above the ground and hazel, hornbeam and Laburnum anagyroides are coppiced for fuelwood and browsed in the field during dry summers.
Since farmers harvest branches every three years and coppice shrubs every two years, the semi-regular management helps minimize the impacts of shade on neighboring crops. Farmers prune the trees’ lateral branches, leaving 6-8” (15-20 cm) stubs called gropi starting 6.6’ (2m) from the ground and ideally spaced about every 20” (50cm) up along the trunk. Farmers often aim to create gropi so that they lie parallel to the tree row and along the inner side of the farmland property borders.
Pollard regeneration occurs either from natural seeding or planting. Because pollards produce less seed and livestock browse many developing seedlings, natural regeneration is never completely sufficient. Shepherds often protected seedlings they discovered, surrounding them with thorny vegetation.
The farmers raised 4 or 5 Burlina dairy cows, a local breed that produced 2.5 gallons (10 L) milk per day each, 25-30 chickens, a pig, and 2-3 sheep for wool. From November to May, the farmers carried feed to the cows in the barn which included harvested meadow hay, leaf fodder (known as frascari) and grass from the woods that they collected each day as needed. After the second hay mowing sometime between May and October, cattle grazed the wooded pastures and meadows. During drought years farmers supplemented feed rations with green leaves from shredded trees.
Farmers harvested two types of fodder from pollards - broco - leaves from shredded/pollarded trees used directly as fodder (often from the thin branches of the crown), and frascari (essentially faggots) - branches and leaves that they harvested, dried and stored for use as winter feed. Farmers most commonly fed stock ash fodder though they also used alder, poplar and hazel fresh. Because beech often emerges early in spring before grasses have emerged, its new shoots provided a valuable early-season feed.
Usually every three years, farmers harvest frascari with a billhook, or cortelon, during the second half of August. During the two years between harvests they pick the tree leaves and use them as feed. Farmers actually begin harvesting a pollard by first shredding leaves from the branches comprising the top of the crown, feeding them to cows fresh. They then cut fascari, leaving the stems on the ground to dry for a day. At this point the shoots stretch about 5’ (1.5 m) in length. They then bundle the harvested frascari stems into faggots 10-12” (25-30cm) in diameter and bind them with shoots of Laburnum anagryoides. They leave these faggots standing in the field for another 2-3 days before piling them flat in crisscrossed layers in the barn for storage.
It takes 3-4 hours to collect fodder from a single tree, and the case study farm retains 200-300 fodder trees. Each tree produces approximately 17.5 ft3 (1/2 m3) fresh leaves and 8-10 faggots. Annually 85-100 trees produced between 700-1000 faggots.
Before feeding to livestock, farmers leave the fodder out during the morning hours to absorb moisture. They then shred the leaves from the branches and feed them to the cows, saving the twigs for fuel. Each cow normally consumes one faggot per day. A productivity analysis of conventional pasture versus wood pasture found that on a hectare for hectare basis, the mix of feed produced from pollarded wood pasture supports one more cow per hectare (0.4 more cows per acre) than feeding from a landscape only producing hay.
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on December 21
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #43Commencing Red Maple Coppice
Post CommentA couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit my friends, the Sawyer's, at their family homestead in Woodbury, VT. I first heard about Dave Sawyer six or seven years ago - his reputation preceded him as an immensely talented, kind, and knowledgable green woodworker, known especially for his mastery of the art of windsor chairmaking. (Check out some of Dave's work at http://www.windsorchairresources.com/sawyer.html). In fact, Dave helped inspire the work of my woodworking teacher Drew Langsner in North Carolina in the early 80s.
I first had the opportunity to meet Dave a few years ago, visiting his home and workshop. I was impressed with the quality of his work and the modesty with which he produces it, most definitely embodying the spirit of a traditional woodworker, living a simple life that revolves around the things that are truly important in life.
Sometime thereafter I met his daughter Annie, who completed a Permaculture Design Course this past summer at Prospect Rock Permaculture, co-taught by Keith Morris, Lisa DePiano, Alissa White and myself. Having grown up on the Sawyer's land, Annie has a deep connection to the property as well as to the skills that make it possible to live a life in relationship with what it has to offer.
Annie had previously mentioned to me that she and her brother had been planning to initiate coppicing of an existing stand of red maple, and her final design project for the course included this as an integral part of the site's productive capacity. I was intrigued and agreed to come by for another visit the next time I was in the area. Months passed, and I recently had a good excuse to take a slight detour and examine the stand more closely.
I arrived to find a 3-4 acre plot. largely dominated by red maple, with significant potential. Annie and her brother George escorted me throughout the stand, describing the site's history and their vision and needs. Red maple (Acer rubrum) is an exceedingly common eastern tree species that often naturally exhibits a multi-stemmed. It undeniably lends itself to coppice management. Unfortunately, the species proves to be less-than-exceptional for most applications. With a density of 34.4 lbs/cubic foot (as compared to 52.5 for black locust - the densest species growing in the northeastern forest) and 18.7 million BTUs per cord (as compared to 27.7 for hickory), it's a relatively lightweight species with a moderate value as fuelwood. The wood proves to be poor in decay resistance, offering little long-term potential for outdoor uses. But... it grows and gives of itself freely. And as I like to say, 'When God gives you red maple... you make (insert useful function here)!'
What I'm getting at is that while not exceptional at any particular function, red maple proves to be well suited to the site, and as such, it makes a lot of sense to use it - especially when their needs are fairly straightforward - building poles (for roundwood structures, yurts, tipis, etc; and fuelwood).
This particular stand appeared to be just about optimal for conversion to coppice management. Largely east-southeast facing, the existing trees were closely spaced, with individual stems often between 6-10' from one another, and relatively young (Annie and George, in their mid-late 20s, explained that the stand was an open field during their youth, having been left to the process of succession sometime in the last 10-15 years), they should respond well to cutting and prove to be productive, with only a moderate need to fill in gaps between individuals to help increase productivity, and encourage straight, upright growth while outcompeting herbaceous vegetation in the understory.
The landscape also provided some very useful topographical patterns that clearly suggested boundaries between individual cants (contiguous areas of coppice). Based on their needs and the existing growth on the site (about 4" dbh after roughly 12 years growth), we decided that a 10 year harvest rotation seemed to make the most sense to provide them with the materials they desired. Thus, we were able to break up the stand into 5 separate cants, approximately 0.4-0.5 acres in size that they could clearcut every other year to provide a polewood and fuelwood yield. The stand also featured a number of more mature existing trees having persisted for a few decades prior to the succession of the field. These included a number of sugar maples, black cherry as well as red maple. We discussed leaving these as standards - depending on their location (relationship to the to-be-coppiced red maple) probably 4-8 per cant - that could be grown on for lumber and/or maple sugaring.
To optimize the productivity of the coppice regrowth, we talked about starting by cutting the cant along the southernmost edge of the stand and progressively working north (upslope - see attached photo with cant boundaries - note that the stand marked 'cant 4' lies at the high point of this portion of the property) so as to maximize each stand's access to incoming solar radiation and minimize shading from more mature stands.
In terms of access, they had already created a rough primary road running roughly east-west up the slope which provides truck access to much of the stand - and an existing 'terrace' that appeared to be the remnants of an old farm/logging road running (north-south) through the southern portion of the property could be reopened and expanded to provide a stable extraction route for harvested polewood.
In parts of the cants where growth was a bit more sparse, we discussed either layering in coppice shoots after they've begun to grow, 'stooling-up' individual stools to produce rooted clones for transplanting, or introducing new species to the stand to further diversify the mix and further support their needs. (They were particularly interested in black locust [Robinia pseudoacacia] for fencing and building materials and fuel).
Probably one of the biggest challenges to coppice establishment will prove to be deer browse, as they've already seen clear evidence of their presence on the site. We discussed the options, and while fencing seems to be the only 'sure' form of protection, they may likely elect to take a wait-and-see approach before making the investment. This will definitely prove to be a challenge for most folks implementing coppice management on their homesteads, and it's something we'll discuss in detail in our book.
In addition to the quality and accessibility of the existing stand, probably the most promising aspect of the Sawyer's property is their eagerness to engage with coppice and the immediate needs it will serve for them. It will most definitely prove to take time and energy to transform the stand to its true potential, but it's clear that Annie and George are up for the task.
To help them along in the process and also provide an opportunity for others to explore the design, establishment, harvest and management of a developing coppice stand, we've agreed to host an open work party/workshop over a to-be-determined weekend in February during the course of which we'll harvest 'cant 1', limb the harvested polewood, discuss value-adding potential and green woodworking skills, and explore the practical aspects of coppice stand design. Once we've selected a date and have more details, we'll post an update - it will definitely prove to be a strong, practical, hands-on opportunity to engage with coppice.
In the meantime, Dave and I would love to hear about projects any of you may have in the works - we're continuing to pour our lives into the manuscript and species database, and the broader the breadth of practical experience we have to draw on, the better. Thanks so much to you all and happy solstice!
Mark
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on December 21
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
commented on a project updateHi Alice It's great to share in your enthusiasm and it's exciting to hear about your interest in fodder crops for livestock. You bring up some excellent questions - we definitely hope to address them in the book though of course some of them will be difficult to 'answer' in a direct way. We hope to speak to speak directly to the needs of producers so it's great to hear about how you envision applying this type of management. I, personally, would imagine that fodder crops would serve as a supplement to hay - and with the climate shifting as markedly as it seems to be as of late, I wonder how much winter feed you'll actually need to produce in PA in the coming years. There are certainly examples of peoples in parts of Europe who largely fed livestock 'leafy hay' as the Greeks call it during times of otherwise insufficient grass. It's definitely a labor intensive process - pruning trees over the course of several years to optimize fodder production, the harvesting, drying, and storing the feed - but we definitely know it can be done. I'd say that herd size will definitely influence the relative viability and practicality of it all. We'll continue to keep folks updated as our research develops and we glean new insights. In the mean time, keep on learning and sharing what you find with us as this is most definitely a community effort. Best wishes and happy solstice Mark
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on December 12
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #42Jesus = Coppice?!
I went to my daughter's college choir's Lessons and Carols performance yesterday in Middlebury, VT. One of the readings about the predictions of Christ's birth included Isaiah 11:1: "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots . . ." Whoa! I thought. That's coppice! Coppicing and root suckering both!
When I got home I called my mother to check on her after her surgery last week. I told her of the reading, and she about hollered! She had been in Bible study the week before and they read the same piece. What's more, she read to me out of their Bible study companion manual. It turns out that the word for coppice in Hebrew is something like 'netzer', and it is believed that the name 'Nazareth' derives from that root word, 'netzer'. As the place where Mary was told by the angel she would bear the baby Christ, this is appropriate for a name, given the prophecy. It also reveals how deeply coppice culture was embedded in pre-industrial, pre-hydrocarbon cultures--everyone used to understand the symbology of "a shoot from the stump of Jesse," or they wouldn't have used the symbol in the prophecy of Jesus' coming.
This can only mean one thing: If you love Jesus, then you must love coppice too, because he was a shoot off the ol' stump!
Happy SolstiChristmaHanuKwanzaaNewYear everyone!
Dave
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Maria T. Stadtmueller on December 13
Hey, Dave--since you have a daughter here at Midd you're probably aware that a food and agriculture studies minor is in the works. Permaculture/agroforestry definitely needs to be represented!!
cheers,
maria stadtmueller
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on November 25, 2011
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #41Giving Thanks
Hello friends
First, though we're formally one day late, both Dave and I want to extend our deepest, most heartfelt thanks to all of you for the support you've given us, both via kickstarter, as well as during our evolving research and writing phases. You have truly helped propel this project along, and we are forever grateful to place ourselves within such a powerful demonstration of community support.
We both realize it's been quite some time since our last update, and felt it was high time to check in. As we settle into the cold months of the year we both have thankfully begun to find a lot more space in our schedules to refocus on the development of Coppice Agroforestry. While Dave and his wonderful assistant, Daniel Plane, along with several other hard working volunteers, have been diligently amassing details on the wood qualities, growth characteristics, medicinal uses, and fodder values of nearly 600 species of woody plants, I've been diving deeply into the literature to see what additional insights and information I can find to further flesh our our growing manuscript.
What this means is that I've spent the past 3 months reading through a wide range of resources relating to forest management, woody plant physiology, craft work and value adding and more, pulling out the most pertinent gems which I'll next work to integrate into our manuscript. It's been a pretty monumental process, and I feel like I've only just begun to explore the mass that lies beneath the iceberg's tip.
The blurred photo below shows the stack of books I've poured through so far. Just two more books - Ecoforestry and the Ecological History of European Woodlands - and I'll start to dive into the vast sea of academic research Dave and Daniel have amassed.
For folks who are interested, I'm including a brief write up of some of the highlights to date...
Once again, thanks so much for your support, eagerness, patience and positive energy. We are honored to serve you and are excited to continue with this ever growing project!
Mark and Dave
Working with Your Woodland - by Mollie Beattie and others - Written in the early 1980s, Working with Your Woodland is the most approachable, comprehensive and well written book I've come across that explores the nitty gritty details of small scale woodlot management. Largely geared more towards forest management in non-brittle, cold temperate climes, the book covers a broad breadth of topics including the history of the northeastern forest, a suite of forest management strategies, the economics of woodlot management, the component parts of forest management plans and more. It's a great read and likely available as a used book on-line. While it pays little if any lip service to coppice growth, it does lay a strong groundwork for well-informed approaches to appropriate forest management.
The Forgotten Crafts - by John Seymour - This coffee table-esque resource is gorgeously illustrated and a delight to peruse. With individual 'chapters' (usually 2-6 pages each) covering well over 50 traditional crafts, the longtime author, researcher and purveyor of self-sufficiency skills creates a highly readable and clearly illustrated resource that explores the historical context of each craft, some of the details of material procurement, harvest and management, as well as just enough information to develop an understanding as to how products are made. This book features a strong emphasis on coppice crafts but also explores complementary crafts that relied on sustainable woodland management in some way shape or form (tanners, wheelwrights, etc).
The Book of Masonry Heaters - David Lyle - Also published in the early 1980s, The Book of Masonry Heaters offers a remarkably comprehensive (though perhaps somewhat dated) exploration of the subject. Starting with a history of human's relationship with fire, the book describes the evolution of our relationship with wood heat, finally exploring in-depth, the stove designs and construction details of masonry heaters from cultures throughout Europe and Asia. For those folks interested in exploring coppice management for fuelwood production, the link between coppice wood and masonry heaters is a match made in heaven. Well-illustrated, this book covers the breadth of this fascinating subject, making the information accessible and easy to digest.
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Alice Starr Dworkin on December 15
There are so many waiting for this book to come --- thank you for crafting it!
On our Pennsylvanian farm we're wishing to feed our cows as locally and resourcefully as possible, made an ever-more interesting challenge due to unreliability of haymaking in a changed climate. Can we cultivate and harvest enough fodder to keep them through the winter? Linden trees? Mulberry? Hawthorne? Can we train these species as living hedges for effective cow fencing? Can cows do the pruning and coppicing needed to encourage renewed growth, thereby sustainably feeding themselves? Is it possible to feed dairy cows from a perennial agriculture system? Can we then let go of plowing to reseed the hay fields, keep our soils from eroding, and save the waterways?
These are some of our questions, deeply practical and pressing.
Looking forward to learning together,
Alice -
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk on December 21
Hi Alice
It's great to share in your enthusiasm and it's exciting to hear about your interest in fodder crops for livestock. You bring up some excellent questions - we definitely hope to address them in the book though of course some of them will be difficult to 'answer' in a direct way. We hope to speak to speak directly to the needs of producers so it's great to hear about how you envision applying this type of management. I, personally, would imagine that fodder crops would serve as a supplement to hay - and with the climate shifting as markedly as it seems to be as of late, I wonder how much winter feed you'll actually need to produce in PA in the coming years.There are certainly examples of peoples in parts of Europe who largely fed livestock 'leafy hay' as the Greeks call it during times of otherwise insufficient grass. It's definitely a labor intensive process - pruning trees over the course of several years to optimize fodder production, the harvesting, drying, and storing the feed - but we definitely know it can be done. I'd say that herd size will definitely influence the relative viability and practicality of it all.
We'll continue to keep folks updated as our research develops and we glean new insights. In the mean time, keep on learning and sharing what you find with us as this is most definitely a community effort.
Best wishes and happy solstice
Mark
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on September 14, 2011
Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Posted project update #40593 Species and Counting!
Post CommentHey everyone!
Sorry to have been so remiss in updating you all about our work on Coppice Agroforestry! Here is a little piece about what I’ve been focusing on to keep your appetites whetted.
I have been working on the coppice species database, along with my friend Daniel Plane. We have amassed a large quantity of information on a growing number of species—currently 593 mostly-temperate trees and shrubs. We have researched the ecological characteristics (size, form, habit, site tolerances and preferences, behaviors, etc.), timber uses and qualities (wood uses, durability, hardness, specific gravity, color, shrinkage potential, etc.), basketry potential, and medicinal uses (parts used, actions, indications). We have the barest of beginnings of research on edibility of these species, and we intend to do a thorough search of ethnobotanical literature for that information, but also to see how the native Americans used these species, since they were more likely to be using small diameter wood than timbers.
Every time we turn to a new arena of research, we find species we add to the database, so we have about half of the species without all the previously researched data filled in! This database alone is a huge project, but the result will be quite useful trove for folks to pull info from. We expect to prune and thin the number of species as we go back to fill in the gaps, depending on their characteristics and how much data we can get for each one, but we still find ourselves in the expansion phase of database creation. Soon, though, we hope to enter the consolidation phase, then the pruning phase, and then the final formatting and editing after that.
We have also embarked on an ambitious project of deep scientific literature review to seek data on the use of these species as fodder for livestock. I have already found over 65 papers from around the world documenting the nutritional value of some species for livestock. However, not all of these papers are that useful to us. Some are poorly designed studies, some deal with species of lesser or little interest for this book, some are too narrowly focused to offer us much more than leads to other papers in their reference sections. However, we will persist, as we have yet to follow many leads we have discovered so far.
One thing I wanted to turn your attention to on this score is the following website: http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/AGRICULT/AGA/AGAP/FRG/MULBERRY/DEFAULT.HTM
This set of UN Food and Agriculture Organization pages has a bunch of papers from around the world on the use of mulberry as animal forage. The results published in these papers and posters are pretty phenomenal! If it were only one study, they would be hard to believe, but time and again, in different countries and with different researchers, white mulberry (Morus alba) turns out to be an amazing fodder plant. This species can produce yields of 8,000-11,000 pounds of forage per acre (all in the tropics; the highest documented yield: 35,000 pounds per acre!), with the leaves being nutritious and highly palatable to cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens and silkworms. The crude protein content of white mulberry ranges in these studies from 15% to 28% (compared to 13% for alfalfa hay!). This species will coppice, it will pollard, you can probably shred the foliage from the trunk and have it regrow. It does need a lot of fertilizer to achieve such yields, but Italian researchers have shown that growing mulberry with subterranean clover makes a huge difference in yield without fertilizer. And you can plant pollard trees in your grass pasture and actually INCREASE the pasture productivity due to cooler temps in the grass!
So this is but one slice of what we are up to, and probably the one web page with the most useful and mind-blowing information we have found so far on coppice-able fodder crops. We need people in the temperate areas of the world to play with this species, among many others, to see how it performs in our climates and soils.
We also need some help on this project! The fodder research, in particular, is very time consuming and not yielding a lot of data for the time put in, at least yet, but we are determined to do the best effort possible to gather the most data we can. If anyone out there wants to help do some of the literature searching, we need people to search for various strings of search terms on Google Scholar—and ideally at University libraries with good academic search engines and article access—for every species we have in our database! If you are willing to put in a few or many hours doing this work, please get in touch with us at coppiceagroforestry@gmail.com.
We are also still accepting donations to support this work. You can mail checks to Dave Jacke at 308 Main St. #2C, Greenfield, MA 01301. WE will honor the same schedule of rewards as posted on our Kickstarter page.
Thanks so much for your support and interest! We look forward to hearing form you and getting this critical information to you in what we hope will not be the too-distant future!
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Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk
Greenfield, MA
Dave: main author of the award winning 2 volume book Edible Forest Gardens; ecodesigner/teacher since '84. Mark: ecodesigner/teacher; natural builder; green woodworker; student of coppice. Find Dave's resumé (pdf) in the bio at www.edi... view more
Awesome!! Keep it up! Thanks for the update!