Black Locust

 The front half of our property is inhabited by tall, slender black locusts.  The leaves emerge later than the other deciduous trees on our land, around the middle of June.  Despite the presence of leaves my soon to be father-in-law is convinced they’re dead.  As the trees grow the branches fall off, leaving only the top third of the tree with branches and when the wind blows they sway more than you would expect.

 Black locusts are a homesteader’s best friend for a few reasons.  They are nitrogen fixers, which means nitrogen rich soil for your garden.  They are so strong they have earned nicknames such as “ironwood” and I read in my favorite timber framing book that builders used to say locust would last two years longer than stone.  They are also self-propagating, meaning cut one down and a new one will grow from the stump.  They also burn very hot, so you can heat your house while burning fewer logs. 

bark detail

We’re using ten-inch wide de-barked locust piers to support the house.  The natural strength of black locust means we don’t have to use a lot of concrete for the piers, which is better for the environment and for our bank account.  And according to our code officer the piers should last longer than us.

locust fence posts, rails are spruce we found on the forest floor

A few tips from our mistakes: when locusts dry, even for just a few months, they become so hard they send off sparks when cutting them.  If you know what you’re going to do with the tree when you cut it down, cut it to the specifications you need and make any required joints as soon as possible.  Even if you don’t put the wood to use right away you’ll be happy you took care of the cutting before the wood turned to stone.

new locust growing out of stump

Also, it seems the bark is the source of the self-propagating.  As you can see from the picture, the stump is growing a new shoot.   The same thing happens with posts that have the bark on them still, a post I put in the ground late last summer is now growing a new tree.  As sweet as this is to look at it’s not very useful to have a tree growing out of our compost pile post.