Angus Murdoch

It sounds like your $15 energy figure for RMH might cover costs for minimal purchases of power saw gas and oil by skilled and experienced operators, with no accounting for substantial wood felling and handling labor, even if the RMH wood biomass required is much less than other wood-fueled options.  How would the RMH cost numbers stack up for market rate local cash purchase of firewood for comparable output BTUs relative to those listed for a heat pump?  

I'm not sure if this is how you ran the numbers, but, in many cases, RMH fuelwood harvest costs over time could be accounted as timber stand improvement (TSI) , and thus production costs for future harvests of higher value forest products, so essentially zero cost for associated buildings heated by what might have otherwise been considered waste wood.  Carbon footprints could be near zero (carbon neutral, except for the fossil energy and lubricants to cut and transport the wood) over time with forest management where annual growth equals annual harvest.  Substantial net carbon could be taken out of the atmosphere where TSI or other factors stimulate forest biomass growth in excess of baseline conditions.

Many thanks,

Angus Murdoch
Kents Store, VA

I agree that black locust is a wonderful tree.  For years, we've fed the branches cut and carry to sheep and goats, who devour it with relish, even when they have plenty of good grass and hay.  I have seen black locust on lists of plants poisonous to livestock; I've heard this has mostly to do with horses reacting to compounds in the bark.  I've never seen any evidence of problems with ruminants on locust fodder, but I'd love to hear more about where the toxicity concerns come from.

BL is easy to establish from inexpensive seedlings (though it may need tree shelters where there's heavy deer pressure), and it will spread rapidly by root suckers from established trees.  The summer defoliation is from the locust leaf miner, which, for whatever reason, has been much less of an issue in our area (Virginia Piedmont) over the past several years.  The locust tree borer generally spoils the wood for saw timber.  I understand that BL is a valuable plantation timber tree in Europe, where (at least so far) the borer hasn't followed.  I'm not sure if the borer is now endemic west of the Rockies.

I have several improved thornless honey locust trees, Millwood and TOT varieties selected for heavy pod production, which I obtained from Springtree Agroforestry Project in Scottsville, VA in the early nineties.  I've also been feeding pods from the Springtree orchards to cattle, sheep, and goats for most of the years since then.  Since many of the seeds pass through the animals, this has generated large numbers of volunteer seedlings throughout the pastures and anywhere I've spread fresh or composted manure from the livestock when they were eating the pods.  I'd estimate that about a third of the seedlings from the thornless stock have come out thornless.  There is also a wide variation in the size and abundance of the thorns; from no-big-deal to downright nasty.  Some of the volunteer trees are now reaching an age where they are producing substantial quantities of their own pods in a variety of shapes and sizes.

In the Fall of 1992, I was in Seattle, where there were, and presumably still are, large numbers of thornless honey locust planted along streets and sidewalks.  Most of these trees were podless, but I occasionally came across "sports" with abundant large pods.  I saved some of these pods and sprouted a few dozen trees from them in Virginia the following Spring.  These, also, produced a mix of thorny and thornless trees, and some of them have grown up to be heavy pod producers.

This is, obviously, a long-term project, but, I think, well worth the effort.  Our animals make very good use of the pods, which tend to hit the ground late Fall to mid-Winter, when other high-quality forage is getting scarce.  The foliage, which is also excellent cut-and-carry fodder, especially if thornless,  grows in fairly late in the Spring and leaves early in the Fall, so there isn't huge competition with pasture grasses.

Good luck, and I hope this is useful.

Angus Murdoch
Kents Store, VA