Ben Law's books and permaculture philosophies

In the alt building forum, ben law came up and I ended up sending ben an email.  Here is his response (which should be of value in this forum too):

Hello Paul,

Really flat out here at present, just completing book and about to start a
really interesting build at sustainability centre.
The new book is 'Roundwood Timber Framing' and it is a practical manual on
building roundwood timber frames, including new jointing techniques,
suitable timber species, suitable tools, case studies and galleries of
roundwood projects, over 300 photos, line drawings etc
Species selection suitable for USA and Europe, published August 2010

I uploaded a podcast I did with Maddy Harland, the supreme ruler of Permaculture Magazine.  She talks with me mostly about permaculture stuff, and just a tiny bit about the magazine and books in her queen-dom.

We start off talking about her visit the mighty, the glorious, the amazing Sepp Holzer.  She went to a desert in portugal where Sepp did his thing (tamera).  Once again he brings lakes to the desert, and shows how to grow all of your favorite garden plants without irrigation in a desert.

We talk about vegetarians keeping pigs.  And I tell my story about Sepp Holzer, pigs, blackberries and a vegetarian. 

We then talk about farm income models that Sepp advocates and Sepp's book that has recently been translated to English.

Maddy has a new blog at Mother Earth News.

We talk about the works of Ben Law and Patrick Whitefield.

sounds like a useful book..looking forward to it

Just read an article in Living Woods on Ben Law's new woodland classroom called, "Lawson's Lessons" (Sept/Oct 2010, No 12). They talk about utilizing Lawson's cypress to build with in their center, which is a softwood and not normally recommended for steaming (which he did very successfully). He also talks about making a cordwood wall with clay (he prefers not to use cement).

got some of his books coming in the mail very excited.

on a side note, is the term sustainability center, redundant, or an oxymoron? ah nevermind words are useless when you start to analyze them

In an article for Permaculture Magazine, No 65, he lists a few trees we can focus on when planning for a post-oil future. They are: black locust, sweet chestnut, scots pine, doug fir, western red cedar, coast redwood, swamp cypress, and lawson cypress. He describes what each kind excels at, and where they don't work as well.

I just read 'The Woodland Way - A Permaculture Approach to Sustainable
Woodland Management' and I thoroughly recommend it. It is mainly focused on the the UK in regards to grants, planning law and the organisations/useful numbers etc but theres tons of info on all aspects of sustainable woodland management from planning to planting, felling to processing.

Paul, Caleb, and Krista make a podcast reviewing Ben Law's "Roundwood Timber Framing" DVD: http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/381-podcast-058-ben-law-roundwood-timber-framing/

I am putting together a book/dvd/magazine page for Paul, and to save him some time from making a (short paragraph) written review of everything, I figured I'd ask permie folks to write "what Paul would say" in each thread something is talked about.

So what would Paul say about Ben Law's work?

Suzy Bean wrote:In an article for Permaculture Magazine, No 65, he lists a few trees we can focus on when planning for a post-oil future. They are: black locust, sweet chestnut, scots pine, doug fir, western red cedar, coast redwood, swamp cypress, and lawson cypress. He describes what each kind excels at, and where they don't work as well.

Since I have three of those trees, I'd pay to (more powerful than "want to" or "love to") read that article, but PM's website is not navigable in that way. Can anyone help?

Hi Fredy, If you subscribe to the print or digital version of PM you you can read all 97 back issues searchable by index free of charge - including all our articles by or about Ben Law - plus many other woody subjects. It is an incredibly good deal! See https://www.permaculture.co.uk/subscribe