I’ve done poplar cuttings for a long time with very high success, you want a cutting roughly as thick as a man’s index finger, but dormant, with maybe an inch to a few inches of wood exposed. Fall plantings might be a little more successful than early spring, (more rooting), but it’s pretty close.
Willow is certainly easier to propagate, almost any stick should do, but should still be dormant, with lead time. Cuttings of willow placed in water should root just about any time.
Currant and related plants, gooseberry, elderberry, josta, will root from dormant twig cuttings very well.
I agree that mimicking the current energy system is likely a road to failure. The fossil fuel era was a golden age that you can exploit once every 60 million years or so. So sad that we blew that endowment in 150, and half of that since 1970. Shaft power still beats the heck out of muscle power, for when it’s really important…
Look at all of this in these ways:
You only have YOU and your hours of the day; days of the week; weeks of the year to depend on to do all of your needs. Tools multiply the works-done results of your labors. You live; or peter out, and lack of works-done-resources, falter and die. A nice steel bit shovel multiples your work done over just hands or a wooden-bit shovel. Yep. Takes metals to make that better-tool shovel.
You can walk 10-30 miles a day. An evolved designed bicycle 10X’s that distance. Ah . . . again takes even better/more metals, and fabrication techniques to make that works-multiplier bicycle. Rubber vulcanizing materials, advanced techniques and knowledge needed too IF you are going to get the 10X results multiplication with a bicycle.
Well fellows we do have all of these available NOW. Dirt cheap even as cast offs.
This same applies to good cast/plate steel woodstoves. IC engines by the bazillions. Really good tractors. Rubber tires, ect.
I am very practical person above all. I am not an entertainments expectant person. I refuse to BE the entertainment.
Starting from here, where am I at today. What are my total available resources? Land owned outright; what is on the land; what is the land capable of.
Take out all idealism’s spins.
Take out all ego’s.
Especially take out all of the “you-musts” preachers, priests, futurists, etc.
Pick and chose one energy intensive modern culture dependency at a time to ween off of. Cry not for the others . . .yet.
Never stop weeding and weening. paring back. Modern cultures will always be introducing new-must-have dependencies. Energy? the newest: LiOn batteries dependnecies.
Life is expressed in personal works achieved.
So live mightily.
Doing something, anything, puts you head and shoulder above the majority bought-in entertainments addicted consumer steeple. Interchangeable, Matrix plugged-in’s.
tree-farmer Steve unruh
Power-works put into perspective.
At 14 years old we were rural renters. The old original family farm house we rented has an old,old massive original DF tree wind storm blow over. 72" at the base. the up ended root plate stood at 15 feet. I, spring bored new teenage single bit chopped off that root base. Took me a week. Learned much doing that. My 1/10 hp/hrs with good axe made results.
Hay farmer we rented from then hired me to do field to barn small hay bucking. At 14 years old. Had to keep up with the 16&18 year olds. But still even conditioned we’all were really only maybe for 1/4 hp/hrs.
His dairy farm brother than hired me the next winter to do dairy farm working. Hurrah! At 15 years old, year around weekly money. I got to use 20-60 horsepower tractors and trucks sometimes too! This was 1968. “New” child safety labor laws kicked-in taking me off all powered equipment.
So down to wheelbarrows, shovels, forks and hand weed whackers for a year. IF I could keep up with the work he would keep be on until I was 16 years.
Fella learns to really, really use hands tools as works-achieved-multipliers, hustle butt and sweat it out.
I recall cutting through one 18 foot high grown over fence line corner by all hand tools. Normally back then be crawler tractor work.
This week “time-back” warping at 67 years old I once again had to fence line cut through a heavy brambles to-be-fnece-line, 6 feet wide x 60 feet long. My 2.2 hp Stihl FS240 with .170" Gator line did 80% of it. On my knees with a 14" Fiskers folding arberist hand powered saw did the other 20%. Done in 4 hours. Went home and took a nap. Back out working later.
Was not worth the effort to fire up the Stihl 260 chainsaw.
As PeteS said: just a bit’o gasoline multiplies human endeavors wonderfully.
Correction to my earlier:
My FS260 Stilh chainsaw is rated as 3.75 horsepower. Same manufacture says that is 2.8kw(mechanical)
Same Stihl spec sheet says
2 1/2 hp is 1.9kW
5 1/5 hp is 4.1kW
7.0 hp is 5.2kW
Horsepower, like KW are actually a math derivative. They are not real, until applied effectively to get works done.
HOW that force is applied over time by the user/tool is what actually determines the usable work done!!
An actual horse cannot make a high speed blower work.
A neighbor spent the same 4 hours using a plug-in electric weed eater ~1.4kW to grass clear “slowly” about 8000 square feet. Line tip speed too slow! Mine, or a good higher speed 2-stroke gasoline weed eater would have done that in 1 1/2 hours.
She had time to burn that day I guess.
Not me. I needs my naps times freed up of waiting on any by-the-numbers, “more-efficient” slow, slow machine.
tree-farmer Steve unruh
Yes, any time in the fall after the leaves are off the trees is probably optimal, though early spring planting will do. Fall planting should promote root initiation before winter sets in. Cut stems so they have a bud near the top, and plant top side up.
The reason this I set up this topic beginning with 2 1/2 horsepower(woodgassed) as a minimum practical is that time and time again for many applications needing less than that I’ve found that a 1/10 hp-per-hour human is much more cost effective.
Another example.
I decided 6 weeks ago I was going to collect up all of my plastic and steel barrels and get them stacked as a southwest wall in my new metal shed. 7 were out on the woodlot spaced woodlot as rain catch barrels for watering seedling young trees. 3 more were in the back of one of the old former firewood hauling Ford pickups. Along with all of my collected up compressor air tanks and large truck brake rotors. I had a fellow wanted at one point to buy all of this from me with plans to build himself a woodgassed truck.
All of this was at least 400 feet to as far as 1000 feet from the building end wall space.
I could have fired up the diesel tractor and in five trips got it all moved.
I could of fired up the 94 Ford pick up and moved it all in three loads.
I chose to wheelbarrow it all. Two hours and I was rainy day good and wet and had my daily aerobics in before my first nap.
Did this not to save diesel. Not to save gasoline. I am practical as I said.
I only had to pick up each piece twice - once into the wheelbarrow. Second time wheelbarrow to end-wall stack.
Using the powered equipments to move these would have driven me to have had to lift, set down, and re-lift/move them four times.
Powerful as the powered equipment are they do not have hands flexibility, and decision capability.
Horse/ox/donkey/mule/goat/dog are fine for straight-line power applying working.
Our engines and motors depending on the equipment application can be made to be a bit more versatility.
Still . . . many time on less than 2 1/2 horsepower applications actually is less stressful to just hands-on get it done. Versus all of the machine-time setting up, post-worked cleaning up, and putting away safely. Cursing a handcrank engine gone cranky. A starting battery gone weak.
Plus some daily sweating work does really keep you going for more years.
Ha! And yes I am very 20th Century and let a motor do all of my drilling works! I came to really like my 12vdc Sears cordless. Love the replacement 14vdc Makita even better. Why not even a newer, higher voltage cordless? I can, and have powered these directly when out remote off a vehicle battery/charging system. Look Ma! No gasoline generator needed! No inverter needed! The vehicle that got you there; is expected to get you back too.
practical Steve unruh
I got my nosed rubbed back into the time wasted inadvertently stepping down from 2.25 hp at 8500 RPM to about half of that at only ~5000 RPM. After using a full 5 gallons-mix with the new Stilh gray bottle Ultra-synthetic bio-degradable oil my exhaust spark arrestor screen 90% burned fused carbon ash clogged. I will be reverting back to the Red-bottled type.
Ha! Single fine line slow, slow weeds removal with NO brush cutting capability then.
Out in the back-end of things so I cut off the screen cone with my Leatherman file and back to double head-lineing with Oregon Magnum Gator .170" long cut and a length of .090 short cut lines Four ends cutting does it better IF you have the power and speed to pull it.
I know I seem to drift off of woodgas-for-power.
I am only trying to illustrate that with modern convertible designed IC engines you CAN have more power capability on a small farm then they ever had back in the animal powered days.
AND get back to making that human-multipling power on just the sun-light and rain that would fall onto that small TREE-farm area.
YES.
You must adapt the equipment useabilty to fit the fuel/engine you will be able to self-make fuel for.
Again it will not be a modern 8500-12500 rpm 2-stroke screamer.
regards
tree-farmer Steve unruh
Here, we are now into summer Rural Agricultural fairs time.
DO go and look, listen to the small old farm engines and equipment’s demonstrations. Then imagineer doing that with lighter more portable IC engines woodgassed fueled.
Walk through and smell the different animals barns. Ask the 4H’ers about time/works, bedding and annual feeding requirements.
On my catch up garden weedings as much as I like my Italian grape hoe I got last year - I can only work it for 2-3, 20 minute stints a day at most. I am too old, and breath lacking anymore. This is not enough daily heavy weeding to get caught back up before the pig-weeds seeds heads drop.
How to (multi-gear-effort) energy output down shift??
I hammer beat off the largest four tine spading-fork head we have. Then bored out and pounded-in, reinstalled it onto a longer 48" pitchfork handle. My back has been self fusing on me for years from the bottom up. Short D-handle ended stoop working has now become impossible.
Now can I standing up tall and proud spade forking over for hours; turning weeds under and soil re-compacted re-loosening the soils.
Not weeds growths behind then it is the different long handled pull-push hoes standing up tall and proud working it.
Ha! Now if I was short-short; with knees, hips and back flexibility; and close to the ground, I’d go different ways to apply my 1/10 human horsepower/hour to this task.
Ha! Bee stung again. My older brother-in-law (with the work worn out bad shoulder) insisted that I get my 1982 John Deere tractor up and running again to hydraulic bucket move around the big butt cut-off. 200-400 pound rounds.
This 22hp 3-cylinder Yanmar diesel does seem to set-off/frenzy any yellow-jackets or hornets bees within 150 feet.
I do not think that I have ever used this tractor past ~15 horsepower as we do not field crop or hay make.
My state has a minimum needed requirements for 15 horsepower motorcycles on any divided highway freeway use.
The smallest power four wheeled road-driving vehicle I’ve ever had/used was 1198cc at ~40 horsepower. Really a 55mph/90kph highway vehicle. Hills, grades and headwinds. You know.
Road use it is the speed multipling wind resistance that is the real power sucker.
A 20 mph capable bicyclist road-racer does 60+ mph behind a traveling wind breaker shield.
Hi All.
After 3-4 years of working on them I am hitting the bottom of the five big tops&butts cut-off piles that the loggers left for me to fuel-wood on.
The easy-pleasie tops mostly all used up . . . . leaving the big, heavy, grains-twisted knarly butt-cut-offs.
Ha! I tried to convince my older brother-in-law that he needed to come up and "help’ me with these for half-shares of the cut-down and split-out wood. Doing this in-place scattered out and about in the rough our ten acres logged off. Nope. He head smacked me around and told me to get Practical, and get our diesel tractor back up and running and haul these out and down to the wood splitter.
$220. dollars in parts, and 3 gallons of diesel later, these are all moved and consolidated onto the most sunny, highest driest spot on our property.
I reckon this will work up to at least 10 cord of fuel wood. Using ~1 gallon of gasoline in the hydraulic woodsplitter to break these 300-600 pound rounds down.
I only ever used the JD/Yammar to 1/2 of its original rated 22 horsepower. That could have been converted to woodgas fuel capable. JohanL. in Sweden with his David Brown diesel tractor conversion.
And the woodsplitter’s 10.5 horsepower on gasoline; I only ever run at 2800 rpm, and half loaded. So as GaryG and others have proven, that could be woodgas powered too.
Pump fuel s for now as they are still available and times a’wasting away before the real rainy season.
wood-farming in the Fall Steve unruh
What? No slamming of me for using spec pump engine fuels?
Having said that yesterday I skipped ahead in my stacked of books reading list to an article,
“How to Keep Your Old John Deere Plowing” by Allen W. MacDonnell
Amazing what he puts up in just 20 pages. Sadly no woodgas info/ideas at all. For that there is the DOW with RonL’s, DavidB’s, WayneK’s, DougS’s and soon BillS’s gasified tractors works.
What Mr MacDonnell does put up is that past just your own natural gas seep-well or pig sties/cow-horse shits made bio-methane and engine converting and tank compressing is that you can relatively easily by refrigerating condensing separating take-out a useable percentage of butane and propane. Taken out as a liquid. Common tanks stored as energy dense liquid fuels. For really excellent powerful clean-burn small engine performances. Chainsaws, eh? Mo-peds!
Then for diesel tractors substitute fuels he goes into older engines direct of use neat-vegetable and fish oils. Heated liquefied animal oils. “. . . every (milking)cow in pasture has the potential of to produce 8 ounces of bio-diesel a day in season.”
Then for the newer spec fuel insistent “compliance” diesel engine types he goes into ethanol/lye bio-diesel making in addition to the more common know methanol/lye process. All in plain simple languages. Addressing safety and toxicity issues.
AND addressing just what to do with the alcohol/lye contaminated glycerol end by-product!
This last “problem” is the woodgas tie-in. 10 years experienced now with bio-diesel makers asking if a woodgasifer could be a contaminated glycerol take-care-of solution.
I’ve read whole hundreds of pages book promoting, detail explaining step by step bio-diesel making that do not address solving this end-game problem. Had an inlaw dairy farmer grew the rape seed. Bought his methanol and lye. made his bio-diesel for his tractors and road truck with then barrels and barrels of what-do? contaminate glycerol. He quit. Still has those barrels I think
Allen MacDoundal does detail out what, and how use this valuable by-product… The glycerol if purified is valuable in and of itself. Food sweetener. Soap and hand lotion additive. Kerosene lamp lighting/heating fuel. Base for nitro explosives/propellants.
He explains in plain text how to evaporate out the ~20% remaining methanol/ethanol alcohols - for condensing and reuse. Wash out and capture out the NaOH or KOH to get this purified glycerol. Using diatomaceous earth and water. (Activated wood charcoal instead!)
He does go over the cost comparisons at small scale. Anything at current US/Canada comparison levels still put commercial pump spec fuels far ahead. European costs levels? DYI fuels looking good. No pump fuel due to what-ever? THEN diy fuels shine bright.
This article was smart-brains electronic magazine discussion group critiqued before print publication selection. And the publishing editor is very, very, keep it possible/doable selective in this book series.
Hi DavidB,
It is in the “Grantville Gazette” series of books. The first published in 2004. Then II, then III, then IV subsequently through 2008. Baen Books is the publisher. Eric Flint the originator/editor. First half of these compilations are short fiction stories following the social/political/day-to-day character-interactions dynamics of the mix-up-timeline premise story “1632” Eric Flint originally published in 1999.
It is the second half of these books that is the real info Gold. Electronic magazine articles from an active Baen supported website of how could this be done for real contributed by experts. To keep the fiction story line writers real grounded.
I have deferred from participating in that site’s activity with woodgas and small electrical genration as my brain&social-patience is lacking anymore.
Keep up with your putting into real, man
tree-farmer Steve unruh
These books were paperback published so cheap and available used.
I have the granville Gazette 1 to 3. I liked the ring of fire books but I never could figure out why woodgas didn’t play a larger role. I think the main books narratives were too established by the time the reader support groups came along. One of the main plot points is the lack of oil. There is some coal gasification in book 3 or 4 but it blows up… I’ll have to dive deeper… thanks Steve.
David, I am at the public library with I and III on hand. Not in these. “I think” the tractor fuels article was in IV (at home).
The story setting premise get’s in the way some with our todays situation. They were metals expensive then in the true 1600’s. Dependent on small batch from ore’s to iron making.
IC engines and small portable wood/charcoal fuel making gasifiers would need lots of affordable refined metals.
Ha! Just what we in North America have today!! Junk, junk, junk abounds. US, Canada, Mexico.
I have said for 40 years that if we in the USofA, insist on continuing to bomb other parts of the world . . . we should do it with junk cars and pickups. Sure way to destabilize a regime. Give the common folk manufactured resources to re-purpose.
Heck of a lot better than pamphlets - to be ignored. Food to be stolen. Money to be vacuumed up propping up a regime.
“Stop! Stop!” “You are knocking down our buildings!” said the Hollanders in post WWII, American/British flood aid bomber food drops.
S.U.
Thanks much Steve.
I have already been downloading and paper printing off, distributing out copies of this from your link.
Ha! Gives a printed link portal string then into their accumulating articles data base!
Yup. If you really want to get something done . . . . ask-a-Steve.
Ahh. Would that be SteveM.? (gotta keep the clone series straight and non-confusing to the muggles)
Hi All,
Been working the hell out of the 2.4 hp Stihl FS240 brush cutter the last two weeks. Used up 5 gallons US of 2 cycle gasoline mix.
Catching the different weeds heads after full stems growth and just before the seed heads would pop, and distribute out.
Macerate them up with a double string set head and I only have to do this once a year.
Do too early, and many of the weeds will grow back needing a second and even third whacking.
The County-Weed patrol truck has been cruising by weekly looking to ticket me if I let them seed out.
This is one application where time&labor needs gasoline dense power to get the job done in the limited time of drought-growth slowing and seeds heads maturing.
I,ve had to clear so far a combined 1800 lineal x 6-12’ feet width of roads edge and drainage ditches of fire hazards grasses and weeds.
Plus another ~30,000 suare feet of rough, rocky, stumpy open drone viewable property.
Ha! Only two wild ground hornets stings this year so far for my unexpected involuntary arthritis treatments. Face and one glove and shirt sleeve gapped wrist.
Now next to get the 2.5 and 5.5 horsepower chains saws working for next winter fire wood.
Sorry to say because my weather downed limbs and machine pushed up trees are in the brush/bramble and big machines pushed up and compacted piles this is another application I could not time/laborwise live with woodgas power-loss; or electric slowness, bulk and connected tie downs.
I have to clamber/push my way into the the harvest woods and arm carry and wheel barrow out the cut wood.
Stationary, taking the sectionals to be cut to a cutting station would result in far too much ground disturbance and resulting slope erosion.
Realize: the good machinable sections went out with the dollars harvest previously
What I burn for my winter heating would normally be machine bunched up into large piles. Seasonally burnt up to clears away.
Sometimes by-mans-hand is much more reasonable than using 2-3 pieces of big diesel equipment.
And doing by-hand/man-worked you really do need all of the get’er done assistance you can afford to invest into.
We each of us only have just so much sweating time and life-hours in us.
Regards
. . . and measure your results by the size of the woodpile made . . . not how much noise made; and fuels expended to make that pile. Racing is for fools, and entertainers. I am entertained bones roasting to the woodstove 250 days of the year reading, and watching old movies.
Steve Unruh
