THE OWNER BUILT HOME & HOMESTEAD
(Page 2 of 15)
January/February 1971
By Ken Kern
The amount of land now being withdrawn from the market for speculation is frightening. Traditionally, the investment in land is especially high during and immediately after a war. Land is considered a safe hedge against inflation. Speculative land is just not available . . . certainly not to the prospective one-horsepower homesteader. We must therefore outwit the carpetbagging speculators by finding attractive homesites that are not attractive to their investment dollars.
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A brief study into rural appraisals indicates clearly the speculative value of various property features. Closeness to rail transport or a main road may be important to a commercial farmer but it is probably not worth the additional land cost to a small acreage homesteader.
Level ground is far more valuable to a land speculator than sloping ground. The speculator knows that level ground farming permits a more uniform type of vegetation. He knows that power equipment can be used to more advantage. But a small homesteader may find that drainage is poor on level ground, water accumulates and leaches nutrient materials down into deeper layers forming hardpan and poor aeration which becomes impervious to plant roots. A hilly site location may not be adapted to large scale farming operations but there are actually more advantages to the homesteader in choosing a hilly or mountainous location.
A level, protected valley receives much radiant energy from the surrounding slopes during the daytime, and is consequently warmer than the surrounding hillside. At the same time, wind movement in a hilly region provides better ventilation and therefore less heat build-up. At night, air drainage is accentuated in hilly regions and a process of temperature inversion takes place. Reservoirs of cold air drain from surrounding slopes to the low-lying basins.
The climatic comparisons of a valley and adjacent hilly regions was made in Ohio some years ago (Wolfe: Microclimate and Macroclimate of Neotome Valley: Ohio Biol. Survey; 1949). The hilly site consisted of a sort of grotto, weathered out of cliff-faces and located at the cove of a valley. The grotto had 276 frost-free days, while the valley frost pocket had only 124 frost-free days. Maximum-minimum temperatures for the grotto were 75 and 14; for the valley, 93 and 25.
A southern slope receives more insolation than a northern exposure. The degree of slope determines the amount of insolation received: According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture Yearbook (1913) land in southern Idaho that slopes 5 degrees to the south is in the same solar climate as level land some 300 miles south in Utah. Also, ground sloping 1 degree to the north lies in the same solar climate as level land 70 miles further north. The warmest slope is the one most nearly perpendicular to the sun's rays during the growing season. Steepness should therefore increase with latitude.
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