Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 9 – Coppice

Let’s talk about some nice, long, hard wood. Sorry, hardwood.

The coppice is divided into five parts for a reason, and for the same reason, it would actually take five years for it to reach its full potential.

In medieval times, this is exactly how they grew firewood. They did not have chainsaws, and cutting a trunk as thick as your forearm is way easier than one as thick as, ehm, trunk. It also dries quicker and is easier to handle allround. So trees were either pollarded or coppiced, with firewood being cut and bound into faggots for transport, then dried, and subsequently used for heating and cooking.

The difference between a pollard and a coppice is mostly the height at which the trees are cut. A coppice is cut almost at the ground level, and a pollard is cut at shoulder height or higher. In both cases, the goal is to get a tree to branch out and create several upright trunks. When these trunks are then cut, the remaining stump creates new ones again. Some trees deal better with being coppiced (hazel), some deal better with being pollarded (basswood), many just do not care that much, and many others are not suitable for this at all.

Almost all softwoods are unsuitable because they will not survive the technique. The sole exception is yew, which was sometimes coppiced for bowstaves, but not very much because it grows extremely slowly, and it was usually cheaper and easier to plunder the wild forests (end of a tangent).

In our self-sustainability attempt, it would be best to plant most of the coppice with fast-growing poplar hybrids. I get ca 1 kg/m² on average with difficulties and suboptimal maintenance, and Google tells me that 0,7 kg/m² yearly on average is essentially the minimum. Therefore, I conclude that 2000 m² coppice should easily produce over 1,5 tonne of firewood yearly on average, and that should be enough to keep one human in a small, well-insulated domicile alive all winters and comfortable most, at least where I live. In colder climates, a bigger coppice would be needed, and vice versa, of course.

On the very north end of the coppice, I think it would be good to plant one-two wallnut/hickory trees, and a few hazels for nuts. And throughout the coppice, any native hardwoods that sprout there should be encouraged in addition to the planted poplars. Eminently suitable are ash (Fraxinus), maple (Acer), birch (Betula), hornbeam (Carpinus), and wild hazel.

How would one go about setting up such a coppice? In the first year, the whole area would need to be planted with circa 30 cm long twig cuts from poplar trees, buried at 50 cm intervals in north-south rows 1,5 m apart. In the second year, before sprouting, they all would need to be cut down at the desired height (I am cutting mine at about waist height, because that is the easier height to use the tools). In the third year, four fifths would need to be cut, and one would be left intact. In the fourth year, three-fifths would be cut, and two would be left. In the fifth year, two fifths would be cut, and three would be left. And in the sixth year, finally, only one fifth would be cut, and that would be the way to go forward – always cutting the longest growing fifth of the plot. This would maximize the harvest of firewood about the thickness of a human forearm.

But that is not all, the coppice could also serve as a source of food all that time. It would be full of insects, and thus it would be eminently suitable as a pasture for chickens and rabbits. There would not be much grass growing under the trees, but there would be some that could be either grazed or made into hay. And lastly, the trees would sprout an overabundance of twigs each spring, from which only some survive and become firewood. Many of those twigs can be harvested throughout the summer and used as fodder for rabbits, either directly or dry. I estimate that together with other supplements to be discussed later, it should be possible to feed five egg-laying hens, a rooster, and one male and two-three female rabbits to provide their offspring yearly for sacrifice on the kitchen altar. If that makes you uncomfortable, I understand, but that is the best way to make the most out of the coppice.

I will write about the sewage cleaning facility next.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 8 – Land Partitioning Again

I had to do some math, and I realized that my previous garden plan does not add up. I knew that I needed to have at least 500 m2 fields, with 100 m²”other”, but I could not fit that into the 3000 m² available. I thought slightly smaller fields would still work, but when I calculated the calories that can be produced in this area, I found it lacking. My initial estimation was wrong; 3000 m² is just not enough. There are two main reasons for this:

When making the initial estimate, I grossly underestimated how much space would be taken by the buildings and the paths between them.
I completely forgot the sewage cleaning facility, which takes up somewhere around 70 m².

And since the point of this exercise is not to make it work with 3000 m² but to find an area that would work, I enlarged the plot to 3300 m² by adding five meters in the south.

This allowed me to keep the sewage cleaning facility at almost the same size, to enlarge the five fields into 100 m², and add some raised beds for additonal crops to what would be grown in the fields. And now, after uploading it, I notice that I forgot to correct a typo. I won’t bother correcting it; have fun finding it, if you haven’t already.

In the next post, I will write in detail about how to use the coppice.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 5 – Purchasing Potatoes

The weather is still cold, but the frost is no longer so severe that seeding potatoes cannot be shipped. Thus, they were shipped and arrived today.

Funny thing about potatoes – I have grown potatoes for over thirty years, and only this year I learned that they are divided not only by vegetation length from early to late, but also into determinate and indeterminate types. Determinate types start growing, set the tubers in one layer once, and then bloom and die irrespective of whether they are hilled up or not. They are mostly the very early and early varieties. Indeterminate potatoes keep growing and setting bulbs along the stem in multiple layers if they are being hilled up. They are mostly the late varieties.

This year, I bought four varieties:

Dali – an early to intermediate potato variety, with yellow-skinned tubers. You might remember that I grew it before, and I bought 10 kg of seed potatoes this year because it is tried and tested for my region, and they can be dehydrated without discoloring. The other three varieties are new (for my garden). I will probably plant these in soil and hill them up. I would like to maximize my harvest, and I could not find out if they are determinate or not.
Camel – early variety, red-skinned tubers. Again, I could not find whether they are determinate or not, probably yes. They will be planted on top of the grass. I bought 5 kg to test it out.
Agria – medium to late, yellow-skinned variety. From what I could find, it should be indeterminate, so it will definitely go into the soil, and I will hill it up as much as possible. It is also allegedly more starchy than the varieties I grew so far, and it should therefore be more suitable for French fries and chips (I tried to make chips last year, it was a disaster). I bought 10 kg because I got hyped up by the description on the webshop – allegedly, it has high yields and big tubers. We shall see if it beats Dali, who holds in my garden a record of growing 100 kg from 10 kg of seed, with tubers up to 900 g.
Bellarosa – very early, determinate variety, red-skinned. It should also be drought-resistant, and thus supremely suited to planting on top of the soil with the Ruth-Stout method. I bought 5 kg to test it out.

So those are my potato planting plans for 2026. I hope to grow at least 300 kg of potatoes, if the weather is favorable.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 7 – Land Partitioning

I had fun today drawing this little map. As per convention, north is on top.

I chose a 50×60 m rectangle because it allowed me to get exactly 3000 m², unlike a 54×54 m square (and drawing meters to a decimal point is pure nonsense). And whereas a square would, theoretically, need the least amount of fencing, the difference is just 4 m overall.

There is a logic behind all these placements and orientations, and I will talk about them in subsequent posts. In this one, I will talk a bit just about the utility buildings.

The buildings are positioned around a small front yard and close to each other, so a person can easily move between them when needed, and the walkways are short enough to clear snow with ease.

A one-story house with a cellar solves one requirement from the “storage” post, and the attic can work as an additional storage space for junk, as is usually the case. I store electric gardening tools in mine when not in use. 10×8 m would be plenty of space for one person, which is what this whole mental exercise is about.

The toolshed, workshop, and garage form one big unit. And the storage barn is as close to the house as it is to the toolshed and the workshop. The garage is 6×6 m, which should be big enough not only for a car, but also for, as previously mentioned, a small tractor, a lawnmower, a verticutter, and assorted accessories.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 6 – Tools

So, we have our not-so-small plot of land, we have the house and all the storage buildings, and now let’s look briefly at all the tools that one person would need to be self-sufficient in firewood and food. If I were to write it all, it would be quite a long list, so I will try to be brief

Full set of hand tools for gardening, orcharding, and landscaping, including such old-school tools as a scythe and sickle. No matter what, there will be a lot of earth moving, so a lot of work with a spade, a pickaxe, and a shovel will be involved.
Woodworking and woodcutting hand tools – saws, a hatchet, an axe, and a machete.
Some power tools, like at least a small chainsaw, and a small electric hoe.
Some medium-sized gardening machinery – a verticutter, a lawnmower, and a small tractor with a plough, a rotary tiller, a harrow, and maybe even a small cart.
A deer and hog-proof wire fence.

Let’s not forget that we are trying to do all the necessary work to feed and keep warm one person on 3000 m². Ideally, it would be a square of land 55×55 m2. It might not look that big on a map, but walking it back and forth the whole day, dragging dead trees behind you, or carrying sacks of potatoes, is not easy (I am talking from experience). And if we are trying to do without a mule or an ox, machinery is necessary.

I must say, I do have fun with this mental exercise. We will look at how to partition the land next.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 5 – Storage

Most food production is highly seasonal or dependent on other seasonally produced products, so storage is essential. And whilst one person can live comfortably on about just 100 m², they would need significant space to store all the food, feed, firewood, and everything else that is necessary for self-sustainability. And since both food and firewood production can also wildly vary from season to season, I think storage of at least 2 years’ worth of supply is necessary to get through a few years of bad harvests, or even one with complete failure.

A barn for firewood and hay – at least 50 m².
A tool shed of at least 12 m², with a workshop just as big nearby.
Rainwater storage of at least 30m³, either as a big pond or (better) as a covered tank.
A small garage for a small tractor, lawnmower, hoe, and similar small machinery, and their fuel(s).
A rodent-proof, dark, cold cellar, circa 12 m²
Large-capacity freezer.
If electric self-sufficiency is intended (I won’t concentrate on that), then sufficient battery storage is needed.

So now we know how much land one would need, and what fixtures would need to be on said land for long-term survival. And it appears to be a lot – and it is.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 4 – Land

Finally, we are getting to something really interesting – how much land would a person need to be self-sufficient with food and firewood? It does, of course, depend on a lot of the previous factors, but let us talk about a moderate climate and moderately fertile soil, like I talked about at the end of the previous post.

I was not actually thinking about this whole issue that much until a few years ago, when one commenter on Affinity brought up the concept of vertical growing of vegetables at home. In their opinion, vertical farming was supposed to be an agricultural revolution, including this small-scale home version. I have immediately expressed deep skepticism about this idea, and in the years that followed, I feel fully vindicated. Vertical farming boomed off big way, and then busted, as I expected. Not to mention that most of the startups that I saw were growing salads and herbs, neither of which are foods; they are condiments.

And thus, there is one thing that I feel confident in saying right off the bat – the land use needed to feed one person is probably a lot more than an average city dweller’s idea. And one of the reasons for this is that most people actually have no real first-hand experience growing anything except perhaps that bonsai/orchid they got for a birthday from a clueless relative, which then hung on for dear life for a few months before it inevitably died.

Talking about my own experience in my garden, I estimate I’d need at least 500-600 m² of arable land for food, and ten times that for wood. However, I am currently heating the house for three people, not just one. With a domicile for one person only, it could probably be reduced to 2000 m², arriving at 2600 m² total. This counts only the production areas; there would need to be more for the house, the storage spaces, animal sheds, paths, etc. Let’s not count too much and round it up to 3000 m² overall, for just one, very thrifty person.

We shall see how I personally would use said land in order to meet my food and firewood needs.

All numbers are, and will be, estimates. After all, I am writing blog posts, not a PhD dissertation.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 4 – Rejuvenating Raspberries

Raspberries & Pears tea is delicious. And it looks just like real tea too.

Howevah, I harvested so many raspberries last year, and we made so much marmalade that I can afford to forgo them for at least a year. Therefore, I decided to not only prune out the dead two-year-old shoots, but to top the whole growth.

This is where it was. I will sprinkle a bucket of wood ash over the area sometime towards the end of February, and possibly also add some calcium nitrate/potassium nitrate for nitrogen in the growing season. This way, it should develop strong, over 1 m long and 1 cm thick shoots that will flower and fruit next year. And at the same time, I had paradoxically less work cutting down the whole growth than I would have if I just gone through carefully cutting out the dead wood. I only left a small patch inside my garden where I will just prune out the dead wood. That way, I could get a few cups of fresh raspberries to eventually replenish my tea for next winter. And if not, then not, this is not an essential crop.

This is a pile of all the shoots, with a significant portion of Symphoricarpos albus mixed in. My late neighbor planted it in the corner of her garden multiple decades ago, and over time, it spread and wandered outside and proved impossible to completely eradicate. I am constantly at war with the weed inside my own garden, where it encroaches near the water cleaning facility and makes the area difficult to access for maintenance. It is also extremely tough and dense wood – I could cut the raspberries with a hedge trimmer, but I had to use a chainsaw for the Symphoricarpos albus.

I will put all this through the shredder to make it into wood chips. And I probably will not use these particular woodchips as fuel; they are very light and not very suitable for that anyway. I will use them as mulch on my vegetable patches instead, to try to reduce the germination of Veronica chamaedrys.

Most of the snow melted, but freezing temperatures returned with a vengeance. I still cannot work in my workshop because it would take three-four hours of heating each day to get the temperature high enough that my protective gear does not fog and/or drip water condensate everywhere. However, it is freezing and sunny, so I can finally start to work outside. I cannot say how much I love working outdoors, despite my feeble body. So I am slowly cutting the hornbeam hedge around my front yard an hour-two a day, and in the remaining time I am pruning my coppice with my chainsaw. The chainsaw is significantly lighter than the hedge trimmer, so the second work is actually the one where I rest from the first. Wielding the hedge trimmer at shoulder-height is exhausting.

So far, I cut a few of the thickest trunks from the coppice, but I have not done a full harvest – I might do that next year again. In the next few days, I will go into the coppice with long pruning shears and cut out about 200 pieces of 2 m long shoots for beans, although I intend to concentrate mostly on bush beans this year.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 3 – Climate and Environment

Needless to say, not every environment is suitable for an attempt at self-sustainability. Neither desert nor tundra is a good choice. Funnily enough, in neither of those live very many people, for some reason.

As a rule of thumb, anywhere where people can live, an attempt can be made. But let’s spell out what criteria the local climate and environment must meet in order for a person to be able to grow their own food/firewood in sufficient quantities.

The latitude dictates day length and seasons, which, to some extent, dictate what crops can and cannot be grown, regardless of any other factor. There is a bunch of edible plants originating from, for example, high altitudes in South America (Perú) that cannot be grown in temperate Europe or North America at lower altitudes, despite the climate being in all other regards suitable. And day length is the sole reason for this – the plants start bulking/flowering at a certain day length, which in Perú is achieved relatively early in the growing season, whereas in Europe that specific daytime length comes too late. This is one of two main reasons why my planned soybean experiment has a huge question mark over it. But other than that, it does not impede self-sustainability; there are plenty of crops to choose from for most latitudes except the farthest north/south extremes. At the extremes, heavily carnivorous sustenance through hunting becomes necessary because agriculture simply is not possible.
Altitude, together with latitude, determines temperature. The interval between the first and last frost of the season plays a huge role in the growth-season length for many crops, and climate change throws a wrench in the works here in a big way, pushing some environments higher up (or farther from the equator).
Sufficient rainfall is absolutely essential. Everything being soaking wet all the time is bad, but not as bad as everything being bone dry.

However, apart from these three main factors, multiple other factors also need to be taken into account.

Local geology. The bedrock often determines the soil chemistry. Not all soils are suitable for all crops. There are even soils that are more suitable for pastures than fields, and an attempt at self-sustenance would, by their very nature, have to be weighted more towards the meat-eater diet, with all its drawbacks.
Local light conditions. Living in the shadow of a huge mountain or on a north-facing slope (in Europe) can have a significant impact.
Local hydrology. Distance from a big body of water or a water stream affects temperature and air humidity. As well as how deep the underground water table is.
Local air currents. Frost hollows can be a real pain in the nethers. Huge winds are not pleasant either.

So, taking all this into account, what environment would be best suited for self-sustenance? Probably a tropical one, with thick topsoil rich in organic content, and reliable rain. I have only limited and purely theoretical knowledge about such environments. Of all the possibilities, I can only talk with some minuscule authority about hardiness zones 6b to 7b, with slightly acidic, loamy topsoil containing relatively little organic material, because that is the environment where I live. And that is what I will concentrate on when talking about detailed plans later on.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 2 – Diet

When talking about self-sustainability re: food, a healthy diet is paramount, and, in my opinion, not difficult to achieve – unless one constrains oneself, that is.

Right out of the gate, veganism is not a smart choice in this regard IMO (and it is only this regard that I am talking about now). Despite all the good arguments for veganism, it is often a luxury that not everyone can afford, and it is especially expensive when one pays for the nutrition with back-breaking labor. And fifth-level vegans would starve, since even potatoes cast a shadow ( I never liked that joke; it clashed with my literal-mindedness).

The biggest problem is, of course, vitamin B12. There are basically only two ways of getting it outside of eating animal products. One is to take supplements, which is not possible in a self-sustainable way. The other way is to use feces to fertilize vegetables, and not being too thorough when washing them for cooking afterward. Eating your own poop works for lagomorphs, but I would not be particularly thrilled about doing it.

The second problem is essential amino acids. There are plants that contain complete proteins, like potatoes and soy, and there are combinations of plants that, whilst having incomplete proteins each, complement each other, like beans and corn. However, all of these do come with some drawbacks – potatoes contain very little protein, all legumes contain chemicals that inhibit protein digestion, and any plant combination requires additional knowledge and work. There are workarounds for these drawbacks, but they sometimes do not scale down well from an industrial process to small-scale self-sustainability attempts (like fermenting, making tofu etc.).

The third problem is iron and calcium. Both of these are needed in relatively large amounts compared to other micronutrients, and both are contained in large-ish amounts in some plants, so intuitively, there should not be a problem here. But there is, because the large fiber content of fruits and vegetables makes both iron and calcium less bioavailable compared to animal products. Which also dovetails into the last problem.

Plant-based foods require more energy to digest than many animal-based products for the same caloric/nutritional gain. When doing a lot of hard labour, a vegan would need to eat (and grow) a bit more food just to keep up.

On the other hand, a strict carnivorous diet is an even less wise choice in this particular context. Although animal-based foods do contain the full gamut of nutrients and thus require less knowledge and processing, they do come with many health risks. All the way from constipation due to lack of fiber, across gout to heart disease. Animal-based foods also tend to be more difficult to preserve, and when they spoil, they are very dangerous to health. And these significant health negatives notwithstanding, even if one does not speak about an area that is sufficient enough for hunting and fishing throughout all seasons, one would still need to grow and store plant material for the animals to survive winter. So much so that it would be actually orders of magnitude more labor and area-intensive than directly growing said plant material suitable for direct human consumption.

So which diet lends itself best to an attempt at self-sufficiency? Omnivorous diet heavily weighted towards the vegetarian end, with fish, eggs, dairy, or occasionally poultry, and rabbit thrown in. Such a diet would fall at an optimum with regard to both labor and land use – orders of magnitude less land and labor than a carnivorous diet, and slightly less land and labor than a vegan diet. The animals could utilize the waste and offal that are not suitable for human consumption, and/or they could utilize marginal lands, where food for direct human consumption does not perform well.

And it is concerning such a diet that I will write my subsequent thoughts on the matter.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 3 – Molehills

The weather got warmer, a lot of the snow thawed, and my garden got covered in molehills, as well as the surrounding meadows. Usually, moles make a few hills throughout the winter, but this year, they have outdone themselves.

I do not mind them that much. They rarely go directly into the vegetable patches. And I do not maintain a lawn, my garden could be best described as a mown meadow.

The scale is not very well conveyed in the picture – the biggest one in the right lower corner was almost half a meter across and over 15 cm in height.

Normally, I just kick and spread these around when they thaw. But since this year I need to fill the vegetable patch between the row of bamboo and my greenhouse, I gathered them all into a wheelbarrow and carted them over there. And I got four full wheelbarrows this way, which is really a lot. They actually did save me some work this year.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 1 – Thoughts

I wrote about this in some previous posts and in comments. Bébé Mélange mentioned it in one of my previous gardening posts, so while I cannot do much in the garden, I decided to write my thoughts about it in a series of somewhat organized blog posts. Please be aware that I still deeply care about social justice and current events. I am currently writing mostly about gardening as a form of self-care, a way of getting my thoughts away from the shit that goes on in the world, with the spewhole for said shit being currently the USA.

Self-sustainability is a modern fad on YouTube. I am highly skeptical of any videos that have it in either the title or the channel name, although I do watch some of them – they do, occasionally, contain good gardening tips. Some are probably delusional bullshit. I do not know for sure since I am highly selective about what I actually watch.

Because true self-sustainability is a myth; it is not possible, and it was not possible probably from around the time humans started to use stone tools and fire, i.e., from around the time of Homo habilis or just after. Some stone tools are made from materials that are not found in the vicinity of where they were used, suggesting, oftentimes, a long travel and therefore a form of early trade. Even today, so-called primitive hunter-gatherer tribes or communities do not consist of self-sustaining individuals – people do specialize in different skills and perform different tasks. Even the communities as a whole still engage in some form of trade for things they cannot obtain locally. For example, for steel tools, fabrics, and salt. etc.

Usually, the term is used in a very limited sense, with regard to just food and, sometimes, firewood. Those two things can almost, but still not entirely, be obtained on one’s own, provided some prerequisites are met. And it is about those prerequisites that the subsequent posts will be. I will be mostly writing from the top of my head, although most of what I write should have a solid basis in both my personal experience and the scientific knowledge that I got from my books and scientific studies. So stay tuned, if you are interested.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 2 – Winter Wood Woes

My coppice is not nearly big enough to suffice my needs for wood, so I have to buy some. When I was employed in a well-paying job, I bought mostly wooden briquettes. They take up little space, and they are a lot less work all year round, but they are also expensive. These last few years, I have more time than money, so I am buying wood scraps from making palettes.

I wrote about this before – this stuff is four times cheaper than briquettes or ordinary firewood (and about six-eight times cheaper than natural gas would be), but it is a lot of work. A lot. I bought 6 tonnes, and I spent 2 months sorting, bagging, and piling them up. And now, in winter, I have to spend a lot of time and effort carrying it into the cellar. Which, funnily enough, I was able to do even when I had trouble with my sciatic nerve. Go figure.

Normally, I use about 3-4 tonnes of wood throughout the whole winter, supplementing it with 1 tonne of briquettes in the coldest months. This year, I would like to forgo the briquettes completely because the money is really tight. Which is not going to be easy…

Looks nice, doesn’t it? So idyllic and peaceful, the garden covered in a blanket of pure white snow, the calm air, the quiet.

Yeah, about that. This was taken today, after I woke up from a sleepless night due to wind rattling the whole house, and after I spent an hour cleaning the walkway from the garden gate to my house and from the house to the greenhouse. An hour later, everything was covered in 1 cm of fresh snow again.

This is an ordinary winter, something we haven’t had for a few years. We had some frost and snow last year, but nowhere near enough to what we used to have when I was a kid. This winter started early, and we have freezing temperatures nearly continuously for several weeks now. I could calculate it precisely (I have a weather station), but I won’t (yet) – I estimate this year’s winter is about 4°C colder than the last one so far. Up to today, I have burned through 2,5 tonnes of firewood. Only 250 kg were from my garden, because this year I was not harvesting the coppice; I merely trimmed the hedge and cut a few poles here and there for beans. At this rate, I might burn through the whole 6 tonnes of firewood that I bought last year.

As far as gardening goes, this is actually a good thing. Snow cover means the soil won’t be parched straightaway, early in the spring. Long, consistent freezing temperatures should do a real number on the spanish slugs, as well as a lot of other pests that migrated up here from warmer climates in the last decades. The mice and voles should be inconvenienced greatly, too. And if I burn through a lot of wood, I will get a lot of wood ash to sprinkle on my vegetable beds for potassium and calcium supplementation. And to kill the slugs that I survived the winter.

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