Not that I am about to buy one, but in reality, how large would one have to be to support someone living off it. This is in terms of harvesting wood, and not other activities – holiday homes or kidnapping portly middle management computer executives and selling their expensive, barely used bikes on ebay?

100 acres?

Plus depends on land quality and how much ‘value’ (ie mature trees) there is already.

Depends if you got any planet killing kids or not.

This lot were 150 miles from the nearest other human and managed to live off the land from 1936 to 1978 without contact with anyone.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact-Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html

Depends how much you want to live off the land really;

Dependent solely on their own resources, the Lykovs struggled to replace the few things they had brought into the taiga with them. They fashioned birch-bark galoshes in place of shoes. Clothes were patched and repatched until they fell apart, then replaced with hemp cloth grown from seed.

Er I was thinking of if you harvested wood sustainably, then sold it, then replanted it, how much you would (or ‘wood’, sorry) need.

On another note, how much wood in weight would you need to heat a house and how many trees is that a year, and how much space would you need to grow them in?

100 acres is quite a lot.

I suspect it depends what your doing with it and what sort of return you want. http://www.forestharvest.org.uk/

How longs a piece of string?

I’ve always fancied it myself, but I don’t like other people so there’s an instant appeal at chasing trespassers of my land with a chainsaw and a hockey mask drenched in fresh deer(probably) blood.

Home

http://www.woodlands.co.uk/ for window shopping

11 Acres near me is £75000

http://www.woodlands.co.uk/buying-a-wood/south-east-england/flag-wood/

Can’t see it being a very economic way of getting firewood 😉

My brother lives in Ashdown Forest. For £100/year he gets a licence saying he can cut as many trees under 6″ in diameter that he wants.

Thanks Wwasas , what a fascinating story.

Upland, lowland, soil type, tree species, stage?

I’d be willing to bet that you could get by on charcoal burning coppice on an off grid subsistence lifestyle with as little as 20 acres, some pigs and chickens, and trade with others.

http://www.bulworthyproject.org.uk/about.html

Cheers wwaswas.
Now how do you make disc brake pads out of birch bark. 😀

According to my forest manager mate, if you have a mature coppice of the right kind of tree, 1/4 acre is enough to keep a family in fuel perpetually. Seems improbable, but that’s what he said.

But it makes sense if you think about it – back in the day everyone was heating their house with wood and 100 acres per person would have made villages and towns impossible.

Growing GM Willow, planting in 4-5 year rotation would give you a reasonable quick return (well we are talking wood here) stick in some woodland lodges for people who want a base for other outdoor activities locally, fishing, walking, mtbing, rock climbing etc offer food sourced from local suppliers and have a decent pub within walking distance and then you might be onto a winner 😉