Beginner's Mind...

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, 10 acres will last a long time as a firewood supply even up here and people burn 3-10 cord of wood a year. I burn 7.5 cords here in an old farmhouse that is pretty well insulated. We get 0.5 a cord per acre average for growth, on better sites it might be near 0.7 cord. Rock maple, yellow birch, beech, white ash sites are your best growing ground in this region.

[Banjo picker]

How about some of you southern foresters letting us know what can be averaged on good southern soil.   8)  Tim

[maple flats]

My main woods for heating my house AND my maple syrup evaporator is about 13 acres wooded on a 15 acre parcel. I have been working on getting it properly thinned for 30 years. Starting in 2003 I started making maple syrup. The first season I only burned about 2/3 full cord in the evaporator. Year 2 about 2.5 cord and year 3 about 3 full cord. In 06 I burned 3 again. In 07 I burned 4 full cord and in 08 I used almost 6 full cord. These are all in the evaporator. My house uses about 3 full cord per year, every year. With all of this and some logging too, I still have not gotten all sections properly thinned. My land is good tree growing land but this is just to show that a woodlot that is overgrown can support more for several seasons before you get to the sustained yieldfigure. For this maple season I have about 8 full cord ready. I think I will be at my needed thinning in around 3 more seasons. On the logging done the first commercial thinning in '79 all went to the sawmill. Since 04 it has stayed on site, first in prep for and then beginning in 05 for my own sawmill. These figures since 05 are a little skewed because part of my evaporator wood has been slab from the sawmill, some from my woods and some from custom sawing of customer's logs. I did not keep a record of how much was incoming slab. Even though I think i will be catching up soon I am also adding an RO (reverse osmosis) to my maple operation hopefully next year which will cut wood consumption about 75% so I may still not need to get wood elsewhere, time will tell. I think many woods likely do not produce the volumn of wood mine does but most of this is still because of the process of improvement cutting on a thick growing woodlot. I suggest you get a state forester (or private if you prefer, but i used one from the state, but not until 2003) to help you decide what to cut.