Green Mountian College

A group of students from Green Mountain College recently visited the shop. They came to learn about our project, the history of timber framing, and for a ride on the boring machine.



Hopefully some of the students will come help in the raising this October. More on that as the date approaches...

The First of the Addititve.

Nearly all documentation of the New Farms project is reductive: sawing and chiseling, digging and sifting. Yesterday the first additive process took place.



Squat Sono Tubes, purchased as pennies on the dollar from ReBuild, were filled with five bags of Sakrete (turns out contractor product names are pawned by 14-year-old dyslexics) by some of our volunteer partners from Transitional Services for Youth and Families. The work was done in an hour and the rest of the piers should be in the ground by Friday.

Chuck + Bit

ReBuild, YouthBuild, and the Pile of Hemlock

After Irene's wrench was removed from the works at Dave's Sawmill, he finished cutting our order and delivered a staggeringly heavy load of wood. Rather than relatively light weight White Pine, this load is entirely Hemlock, which is denser, harder, and more brittle - all steps in the "ah shucks" directions.



With Hemlock in the hopper cutting is now half the battle. Moving a 12' piece of pine alone is a hassle, but not out of the question. Moving a 12' piece of Hemlock is about the same for each of the three people needed to move it.

Enter: YouthBuild. This morning eight stalwart youths and two instructors assisted in organizing the above lumber in the wall of wood pictured below.



They were thanked appropriately.

A huge aspect of this project which has had little press is our host. ReBuild - formerly the Building Materials Center - at 339 Pine street has made this project possible. More valuable than the wood and all the sweat put into joining it, their gracious acceptance of our partnership is the only reason this project was able to get off the ground.



The staff - Janet, Jeremy, Eric and Dave - has been supportive and always ready to assist with a fork lift or extra set of hands.

675 LOAD LIMIT

Today we moved the last of the cut wood out to the site in anticipation of the new arrivals - 18 12' 5x7', and a mess of 8x8' at 12', 14' and another 16'. I figure the two posts in the photo are around 100lbs a piece and the braces are about 30lbs. That's 410lbs plus a driver and Oscar the Dog - not including the 200lbs of tools.

And poof, it was gone.

Brace Yourself

We're hotly anticipating the second load of lumber. The first round (posts, sill plates, braces) are cut and weathering in at the site and once we have the second round, we can pin down a raising date.