Photo of Andy Arthur

Andy Arthur

October and already the leaves are fading away in the Adirondacks. πŸ‚ Most shocking to me is that we are less then a month away from November, which in many ways should be a sigh of relief with the craziness of work and with the deep blue skies and crisp days of that month.

2016 Land Use in the Finger Lakes

2016 Land Use in the Finger Lakes

Yesterday, I downloaded the National Land Cover Data for 2016. I had some older data but I hadn't updated it in years, but soon realized I could make some very interesting maps and graphics with this data. The Finger Lakes are kind of interesting to look at in particular as you can see the Northern Finger Lakes have a lot of cultivated lands -- mostly corn and soybeans -- for feeding dairy cattle, while the more upland and rocky lands in the Southern Finger Lakes are either wooded or pasture.

Poland, NY

Poland is a village in Herkimer County, New York, United States. The population was 508 at the 2010 census. Poland is on the border shared by the towns of Newport and Russia. The village is 16 miles north of the county seat in Herkimer and is 14 miles northeast of Utica.

Landowner, not a homeowner

Eventually, I plan to become a landowner more then a homeowner. Land not just a place to have a home on, but land where I can call my own, use for my own purposes, study nature and wildlife, hunt and trap on. Public lands are a fantastic resource, but they aren’t really my own even though I temporarily occupy the lands.

As a landowner you become responsible not just for your home, but also maintaining the land to maximize habitat and value to you. There are many ways to use land, farming, firewood, timber, hunt, trap, and so forth. Careful methods of use can maximize both the value of the land to you and wildlife that lives on it.

Land is more important to me then any kind of home I would have on it. I don’t want to chop down the forest or develop it more, I’d much rather take an adapt an existing structure, and use as much of the land that I own for natural purposes — be it agriculture or forest property. I would like to meet as much of needs on-site as possible, from renewable energy to food, to an live with as small of an externalized impact as possible.

Cabin