

Logs installed over air barrier. Image credit:Otter Creek Log Homes

Looking for an environmentally responsible hedge against inflation? Forget works of art, Persian rugs, a job with a lobbying firm, or gold. Instead, optimize the amount of wood in every aspect of your life: present and future. If you want to build a single-family home, for example, the multi-walled "log cabin" (pictured) is the way to go. To achieve the desired effect, add as much wood as possible on the interior surfaces.

Then fill it with wooden furniture. Preferably this would be made locally or second hand.

You're not done yet. You must plant enough commercially useful trees, or support a forest preserve with them, sufficient to produce enough timber to maintain your log home for generations forward, as well as to build similar "cabin-style" homes for prospective grand children.

Interestingly, log cabins are probably the single most sustainable and common style of prefab going - having been around for many decades while accruing many design improvements - outside of the mobile home thing. That's saying something.

Got a favorite turn-key cabin supplier or design? Let us know.