A Log Cabin Christmas

December 25th, 2007
LogX-mas

During this 2007 holiday season, it seems the children are all nestled asleep in their beds, with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads… oh, wait. You say the “children” are all teenagers now, terminally bored with Christmas and expecting a 10-gig iPod loaded with every album too objectionable to be played in public, plus keys to your a car and $400 worth of “Prison Chic” pants that hang somewhere around the thighs and show off their underwear?

PapaElf

Did the fudge never set, so you had to run to the store to buy enough ice cream to disguise the un-set fudge as super chocolate syrup? Were those tollhouse cookies hard as a rock, breaking grandpa’s dentures with the first bite? Did cousin Jim finish off the entire bottle of rum you’d brought for eggnog before passing out under the tree? Did the dog eat that perfect glazed ham before you could get it into the oven to heat? Did it snow during the night and hide all the firewood you’d stacked somewhere in the yard for the Christmas Eve fire? Are the in-laws insisting on watching Enemy of the State as a “Christmas Movie” instead of It’s a Wonderful Life for the 16th time?

Be of good cheer, enjoy yourself anyway, and…

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Filed under Family, Holidays, Homestead, Log Construction | Comment (0)

Building It: Log Home Advantages

October 16th, 2007
Ducat

In my last post I started talking about building your home, and introduced the subject of log and timber frame housing. These homes are becoming more and more popular all over the country, and offer some rather large advantages for homesteaders in a number of ways.

First and foremost, log and timber frame homes are environmentally friendly. There are companies producing “kit” homes in various parts of the country from farmed pine logs, and there are even a few specializing in ’salvage’ timber. Those are standing dead or down trees, usually from large forest tracts (publicly or privately owned), harvested at little or no cost to the harvester because harvesting is part of the forest management strategy.

In my southern Appalachians, for instance, we have large stands of southern pine and hemlocks that have succumbed to pine bark beetles and wooly adelgid infestations. These insects get underneath the outer bark and kill the trees by destroying that thin layer of inner bark that the tree depends upon to transport water and nutrients from the roots to the limbs and needles. While treatments have been developed and are now available to landholders like us, it will only save the young trees. The older trees have already succumbed, and local environmental regulations even demand that landholders take down dead stands (or burn them).

Continue reading »

Filed under Building, Home Buying, Homestead, Log Construction, Timber | Comments (2)