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The Woodland Homestead: How to Make Your Land More Productive and Live More Self-Sufficiently in the Woods
Put your wooded land to work! This comprehensive manual shows you how to use your woodlands to produce everything from wine and mushrooms to firewood and livestock feed. You’ll learn how to take stock of your woods; use axes, bow saws, chainsaws, and other key tools; create pasture and silvopasture for livestock; prune and coppice trees to make fuel, fodder, and furniture; build living fencing and shelters for animals; grow fruit trees and berries in a woodland orchard; make syrup from birch, walnut, or boxelder trees; and much more. Whether your property is entirely or only partly wooded, this is the guide you need to make the best use of it.
240 pages, Paperback
First published July 10, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 15, 2019
This book is filled with so many things that can be helpful for a person who just purchased wooded property. Everything from counting trees, to making maple syrup is covered. Using saws and axes to raising chickens. I could go on and on. This will be my go to book as I build my mountain top cabin.
February 22, 2023
I found this when looking for other books in the Backyard Homestead series also published by Storey Publishing. It was intriguing to me because the land my Husband and I plan to build our Homestead on is heavily wooded and we were debating whether or not to clear cut a significant portion of the land- yet here was a book offering us an alternative. So at first I picked it up first for Kindle, but then decided to get it in Paperback form once I saw the information in it.
This book really does take you through the basics from beginning- right up to and including information on how to perform your own Land Surveys to determine what's in your woodland and how you can best utilize it. It also has an incredible section on various tools and even the techniques of using them for various needs. Perhaps what I love most about this section is that it even tells you the appropriate way to fell a tree- including a handy illustration showing you where your escape routes are compared to the potential danger zones or "felling area" (the area the tree could fall in if something goes wrong with the cuts the author illustrates).
In addition to showing you how to evaluate, get started, and build a farmstead in your woodland, it also gives you a host of ideas for what to do with your trees. These suggestions include everything from making furniture, to charcoal, how to cut and season firewood, how to tap trees for Syrup, basket weaving with barkstrap, and so on.
All in all, there is an incredible host of information here... And while my Husband and I have still decided to clear cut some of our land for pasture, we've definitely opted to keep more woodland than initially decided because of this book and I look forward to putting the information here into practice.
This book really does take you through the basics from beginning- right up to and including information on how to perform your own Land Surveys to determine what's in your woodland and how you can best utilize it. It also has an incredible section on various tools and even the techniques of using them for various needs. Perhaps what I love most about this section is that it even tells you the appropriate way to fell a tree- including a handy illustration showing you where your escape routes are compared to the potential danger zones or "felling area" (the area the tree could fall in if something goes wrong with the cuts the author illustrates).
In addition to showing you how to evaluate, get started, and build a farmstead in your woodland, it also gives you a host of ideas for what to do with your trees. These suggestions include everything from making furniture, to charcoal, how to cut and season firewood, how to tap trees for Syrup, basket weaving with barkstrap, and so on.
All in all, there is an incredible host of information here... And while my Husband and I have still decided to clear cut some of our land for pasture, we've definitely opted to keep more woodland than initially decided because of this book and I look forward to putting the information here into practice.
October 17, 2022
If you actually had the time and energy to live this way, you’d save oodles of money. A good overview of various ways to manage a wood lot, with lots of old-fashioned techniques and interesting ideas that I haven’t come across in other books. Some of the explanations are a bit opaque, but there’s lots here to get started on. And the slightly retro pen-and-ink high contrast illustrations are very good.
January 30, 2021
Informative — an outside-the-box approach to homesteading.
February 7, 2023
This was an excellent book with new-to-me ideas about caring well for and making the most of the wooded portion of our land. I appreciate the many unique ideas about coppicing, laying hedge, using living fence posts, and training pigs to uproot stumps. I'd love to meet the author because he seems like someone who loves to learn by doing and has gained a lot of experience. Highly recommended to anyone with wooded land who wants to care for it well and provide for your family at the same time, partnering with the ecosystem to bring health and usefulness.
February 26, 2022
Personally one of my favorite homesteading books that I read as a new homesteader a few years ago with zero experience. I read many from the library and I felt it was valuable enough to purchase a copy and have it on hand for reference and inspiration.
September 10, 2023
Covers so many aspects of the woodland homestead with lots of tips and practical advice for someone planning to do most things themselves. Very interesting to read and introduced me to many topics that I want to explore further.
December 16, 2019
Very comprehensive with many ideas we never would have thought of or considered.
April 24, 2020
4/23/2020
August 3, 2020
Good book if you have wooded property.
September 21, 2020
Woods self-reliance porn at it's finest.
January 22, 2022
I enjoyed this very much as we have a small piece of property that is heavily wooded. There are some great ideas I'd like to put into place
October 11, 2022
Very informative and great resource.
December 29, 2022
Full of good ideas & instructions!
January 15, 2023
Nice book
July 6, 2015
The Woodland Homestead, How to Make Your Land More Productive and Live More Self-Sufficiently in the Woods, Brett McLeod
Genre: Outdoors & Nature, Self-Help
Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews
I was brought up in a home where every bit of land was used, and if dad couldn’t grow it then we rarely ate it...we lived in a council house with a largish garden and he had 2/3 acre of allotments. We had goats for milk ( awful stuff! and the damn things are born to escape and eat what they shouldn’t), chickens for eggs and meat, rabbits to sell for meat ( always made me cry as it was my job to look after them and I named them all – I still can’t eat rabbit), turkeys reared for xmas, plus of course all home grown veg and fruit, the surplus of which was preserved for winter in bottles, jams, salted or frozen. I still love that idea of growing as much as possible. Now I’ve a home with four acres of land, much of which is woods and this book caught my eye.
Sadly I’m disabled now and unable to put most of this into practice, but for anyone able bodied it’s a real gem, full of practical advice on managing woodlands, unusual and practical ways to use wood offcuts, how to build shelters from an open stock one to a full cabin. I love they way he tells us about what trees to use for which purpose, and how to plant around them, how to make “living” fences. I’ve always loved cut and laid hedges, those where the trees are cut partway through and bent horizontal allowing new shoots to grow up and form a strong, impenetrable barrier. There’s advice on fruit growing (I’ve lots of fruit trees and plants so that was useful), tree pruning and even foraging from what grows naturally. For me its important to work with the land, to look at soil types and surrounding environment and plant to suit it. Trying to grow something which has very different needs to that which you can provide is going to fail and feel very demoralising. By taking the time to see what works on our own land naturally and follow suit will be much more successful.
I loved his tale of cider making at age seven – I was trying ( and naturally failing ) to make perfume from rose petals soaked in water for several days at the same age.... Brett utilises many ideas from the past which have gone out of fashion now, but are so good for both us and the environment, and I feel we need that voice to encourage continued use. There’s something special about old methods when they use what’s to hand, and have little adverse impact on the environment. We only have one world and leaving least impact on it and preserving what we can is really important to me.
For anyone interested in self sufficiency, or at least part of it, and who has or aspires to have the land for it one day this book is perfect. Practical, easy to follow advice that will set the reader on the road to success.
Stars: Five, practical advice for anyone wanting to learn more about self sufficiency.
ARC provided by Netgalley and publisher
May 31, 2015
I received a digital copy of this title from the publisher via Netgalley.
Despite not living in North America, or indeed anywhere near a woodland, I was drawn to request this book because there's a slim possibility that I may one day live near woodland, and thought it might have some generally handy information that might just be interesting to know.
I have to say though, that this book is way beyond the level of the casual woodland dreamer. If you own land with woodland and are even mildly interested in doing something productive with it, this is probably going to end up as your go-to manual. It has every possible topic you could think of related to woodlands, from identifying the species of trees on your plot, to carving your own axe handles, to instructions for making contraptions to help you move logs around your plot.
Each section is set out very clearly, with easy-to-understand instructions, and plenty of images to help things along. The chapters are chock full of information and there are even some case studies, for want of a better word, to provide context to the information.
So while this book won't really help me any, and didn't quite satisfy my desire to read non-fiction while imagining myself in a woodland setting, it will certainly be indispensable to the beginner looking for some sound advice about how to productively manage their land.
Despite not living in North America, or indeed anywhere near a woodland, I was drawn to request this book because there's a slim possibility that I may one day live near woodland, and thought it might have some generally handy information that might just be interesting to know.
I have to say though, that this book is way beyond the level of the casual woodland dreamer. If you own land with woodland and are even mildly interested in doing something productive with it, this is probably going to end up as your go-to manual. It has every possible topic you could think of related to woodlands, from identifying the species of trees on your plot, to carving your own axe handles, to instructions for making contraptions to help you move logs around your plot.
Each section is set out very clearly, with easy-to-understand instructions, and plenty of images to help things along. The chapters are chock full of information and there are even some case studies, for want of a better word, to provide context to the information.
So while this book won't really help me any, and didn't quite satisfy my desire to read non-fiction while imagining myself in a woodland setting, it will certainly be indispensable to the beginner looking for some sound advice about how to productively manage their land.
May 2, 2015
From Netgalley for a review:
I have long wanted to sell all my belongings, buy a lot in a forest, and live off the land. So anytime I get to read a new book on the subject it makes me very thrilled! This is an excellent example on home-steading and self sufficiency, with the specification of living in a forest. And the forest is so bountiful, so having so specialized a guide makes perfect sense.
I do wish the guide had more illustrations, there are plenty, but I always want more, it is just my thing, so not really a critique. I truly enjoyed this book and have nothing bad to say about it, really. I recommend it if this kind of thing interests you.
I have long wanted to sell all my belongings, buy a lot in a forest, and live off the land. So anytime I get to read a new book on the subject it makes me very thrilled! This is an excellent example on home-steading and self sufficiency, with the specification of living in a forest. And the forest is so bountiful, so having so specialized a guide makes perfect sense.
I do wish the guide had more illustrations, there are plenty, but I always want more, it is just my thing, so not really a critique. I truly enjoyed this book and have nothing bad to say about it, really. I recommend it if this kind of thing interests you.
March 26, 2015
The Woodland Homestead is filled with description, exceptional sketches, and detailed information about how to turn your messy forested lot into a beautiful and productive Woodland farm. Brett McLeod shows how to make a cabin, furniture, fences, silvopastures(woodland pastures), charcoal far superior to store-bought, animal fodder and human food. Woodland Homestead is a wonderful resource for anyone with a wooded lot of any size.
September 11, 2015
I freely admit that there was a good third of the book that I couldn't really quite follow -- I learn better doing than reading, but! Wow, what a comprehensive and well written guide to woodlot maintenance. I've always wanted to learn more about it, and this was an accessible and interesting read.
March 8, 2016
Good quick introduction to making layered use of woodland property, polyculture grazing/forage and orchard gardening.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews