Indian Summer

      Sunrises are particularly beautiful around here, or perhaps they are beautiful everywhere and we have been rising especially early to catch them lately. This past month we have been working really really really hard to finish our timber frame and get it erected. So we have been following the advise of that wise man Benjamin Franklin, "early to bed, early to rise..." which is easy to do without electric lights to keep us up at night! The weather has been in our favor, with cool nights and mostly sparkling warm days, full of wildflowers, hawks soaring overhead, Monarchs migrating through (turns out one of their favorite flowers to feast on is rare Blazing Star of which we have a whole meadow of!) Our wonderful neighbor Beth has been helping us on the frame cutting (see the lovely lady winding up for a swing below) and truly an arsenal of talented, generous community members have been accompanying us every step of the way. We are so blessed. A friend recently told me about a Native American community he had spent some time with, where he learned from an elder that when they are taught how to pray, it is never to ask for what one needs, since we already are surrounded by everything we need on this earth, but rather they are taught only prayers of thanks. I can feel the truth of that these days...

 

     

        As you can see, we have been doing quite a lot of chisel-and-malleting of joints, positioning and marking timbers to be jointed and then lifting logs on and off the framing bed. There have been days when I couldn't have been happier than sitting in the sun, tapping away a perfect connection for hours, and more lately me and my aching wrists have been very ready for this phase of our project to be over. What has helped a lot in this endeavor have been timber dogs and temporary pins that our neighbor Brian blacksmithed at his forge for us. The timber dogs act like giant staples to keep heavy logs from rolling. I finally got a photo of Brian at work, making something far more beautiful than our practical basic tools. Also a key tool has been pevees or cant hooks, which enable one us alone to roll the giant weighty logs around, in and out of position for micro adjustments to the joints. But enough of this talk! We just finished our last bent/section on Saturday! Woohoo! On to the lifting party!

Timberdogs holding tie-beam to crucks

       

      Another friend I have been feeling a lot of gratitude for this past week has been our neighbor Ethan, who this past week helped us pick out our ridge poll and two sill beams from a nearby mature forest of oaks and hickories. We needed a straight, 36 ft. tall, relatively consistent diameter tree for our ridge poll and Ethan was the logical person to turn to since he has been practicing and teaching sustainable forestry ever since he lived in France and was on the woodsmen team at The Arch (radical simplicity community). Everyday he would go with a team of men and fell trees with only saws and axs, then section off, split and stack firewood for the community's winter use. It took us hours to pick out our three trees and then many hours more of cutting and felling them. All three got snagged since the forest is fairly dense, but we ended up with a shagbark hickory, a black oak, and a red oak. Our Amish neighbor Jake then took over with his team of Belgians and pulled the massively heavy timbers to our land nearby, bless their hardy horse hearts! 

 
     Then Mike and I took over with our old familiars, the drawknives, and spent a good many hours stripping bark and preparing the ridgepoll for our upcoming raising day. It has been a year since we stripped our last sixteen logs and I was reminded of how grueling that task can be, and how far we have come. Our great hope is that on our raising day, some kind folks might feel inspired to whittle a bit on the two wall plate logs, since we have a combined 72 ft. more to debark!

      That brings us nearly to the present... As we got closer and closer to finishing our last section, we have had to start planning the next phase. The terrifying-moment-of-truth phase when we see whether our frame will stand erect or tumble apart in front of all of the eyes of our friends and neighbors! Part of getting ready for the day has meant having a "lifting day" when we reassemble all of the sections and get them in position to be lifted on raising day. I have been a bit anxious for lifting day, since I hadn't really been able to conceptualize how it would all be physically possible. Sure, we have been able to lift one log at a time with six to eight people, but would the joints line up again? Could we lift combinations of logs and how would we brace each section to get it pivoting off the ground? Could we do all of it in a morning and feed volunteers afterward? On top of worrying about all that, we had to scrounge up twenty straps, twenty-six pins, disassemble the framing bed, juice up the drills.... Oh, and get enough volunteers to come. Turns out, this time of year is a busy project time for just about everyone, and we had a hard time coming up with even eight people! The morning of, we weren't sure if enough people would show up, but somehow we seem to always get the perfect help for the task at hand, and our lifting party was no exception! Thanks especially to our neighbors at the Possibility Alliance who sent four volunteers to our rescue, we were able to do all of the above with muscle to spare. The framing bed came down, the bracing came together, the first bent was a bit touch-and-go but once we got it together, it took us only twenty minutes to assemble the second and then fifteen for the third, followed by a perfect-amount-of-food lunch. Then three folks had to leave, leaving only five of us (plus Mike the non-lifter) to assemble the last one. We contemplated sitting around for an hour until more volunteers would be able to come, but we decided to just try it, and guess what? We did it, though with no muscle to spare. It was a group high-five moment for sure. Wow. So we are almost ready for our raising day, which we have set for Saturday, October 5th. Everyone in our community has been invited and we are now hustling to get our last details in place, our final tools, ropes, our work site ready for the day. By our next post, we should have something resembling a house standing upright... So if you happen to be passing through northeast Missouri this coming weekend, stop on by and join the moment!