Tips for Buying an Old Farmhouse

Many city-bound Americans see themselves eventually owning an older house in the country. It may be a second home or a retirement spot. It has several large shade trees in the front yard—and a big front porch.

The wood-frame farmhouses that we associate with Norman Rockwell’s America were built from the 1850s through the 1930s. After the War, the style favored one-story brick ranches. Second homes in the country ran toward either log cabins or glassed-up post-and-beamers.

Millions of white, clapboard-sided farmhouses were built across the country in the 75 years before WW II.

The best please the eye. They’re well-sited, and their proportions are balanced.
Many have porches designed for swing-sitting, but are often used for the year-round “temporary” storage of grills.

Within this group, country buyers will find everything from a barely standing wreck to a newly painted pageant hopeful. Read more »

Timberland is a valuable investment in a volatile time

Woods provide shade, lumber, mistletoe and toilet paper. They even make oxygen and store carbon.

Name one beach that does anything more than gives you sand itch.

Before Columbus, the 50 states had about one billion wooded acres, about 40 percent of our total land-and-water area. Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that forests cover nearly 750 million acres.

America’s woodlands are increasing. Agricultural fields and pastures are returning to trees. Timber users and investors grow their own on plantations dedicated to fast-growing species, like loblolly pine.

Suburban development consumes woodland, but gain in fore st cover has exceeded loss in recent years.

Forests and urban trees together sequestered about 12 percent of the carbon dioxide released by fossil-fuel combustion in the U.S. in 2004, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Read more »