From Stump to Sticker

We spent the beginning of last week leveling our site, sizing and building formwork, and pouring concrete for our barn's grade beam foundation.  The weather up here is pretty wild: sunny and warm one minute, big wind and horizontal rain the next.  Not the ideal for the the work we are doing, but native Vermonters just shrug and say, "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes, and it will change!"  Nevertheless, we were able to put together all of our formwork, cut and lay our rebar, and get everything level by the time the truck showed up for our pour.  We even had time to learn how to float concrete to get an extra nice surface for our grade beam.

The latter part of the week we spent sourcing more lumber for our project.  We cut down two trees at Yestermorrow's campus, one white pine about 100+ years old, and a hemlock tree about 70+ years old.  After learning about safe felling techniques, our fearless leader Nick, dropped the trees with his chainsaw.  Once down, he limbed the trees (removed all limbs), and then bucked the trees into several different lengths - indicated by our cut list for our barn.  This method gives you the opportunity to waste less wood than buying from a traditional lumber yard.  Some of the limbs of the trees are  even big enough for us to get some decorative pieces out of.

Hauling these large segments of tree from the forest took the majority of Thursday afternoon, and I now know more about logging equipment than I ever anticipated.  An understanding of physics and points of leverage are really helpful tools when figuring out how to move an 800 lb. tree, as well as the right tools!

Friday, we spent milling our trees into lumber for our project.  As a professional sawyer, Nick has his own portable sawmill, the Wood Miser.  It really is pretty amazing to watch a tree trunk transform into lumber.  Once cut to size, the lumber is placed on 1x furring strips, known as stickers, above the ground.  This technique allows the lumber to dry, and control (and prevent) warpage.  Our lumber will not be kiln dried for this project, so we need to take extra care in our stickering process.  Staggering the stickers is a big no-no, as this will cause uneven drying and deformation.

What a View!

The view from our jobsite is absolutely breathtaking.  Knoll Farm sits up high, overlooking the Mad River Valley with sweeping views of the local ski mountains, the Mad River, neighboring farms, and lots and lots of beautiful forest.  

Tree Hugging and Dirt Loving

The first week's foray into the world of natural building was action packed!  We spent the week discussing our current environmental situation, conventional building practices, the green building trend, and natural building styles and techniques.  After many site visits and slide shows, we finally had an opportunity to get down and dirty by building large scale models of natural wall systems.  After collecting all of the materials needed for our models in our local environment (straw from a local farm, wood from our campus forest, clay from the side of the mountain across the street) we divided into two groups to build a post and beam structure with straw bale infill walls , and a stud frame wall system with wattle and daub interior finish, and a woodchip/clay insulation system in the wall cavity .  Creating a natural plaster for the straw-bale walls from clay, sand, and water was by far the most enjoyable part of the entire week. (Next week, photos of these models will be posted for your viewing pleasure!)

The project for this year's Natural Building Certificate/Intensive program is to build a barn at Knoll Farm for the Center for Whole Communities.  Over the past couple of weeks, the site has been cleared of trees, and excavation and trenching have begun.  The trees from the site are being milled at Yestermorrow's campus for the structural frame of the barn.  

This coming week, we will be pouring a 8" concrete grade beam for the barn, while also evaluating all things good, bad, and ugly about concrete.....

Vermont is absolutely beautiful, and I am fortunate to be surrounded by positive and inspired people.  I am working out the kinks with this whole blogger technology, and you can look forward to seeing some photos in the future (once I get my card reader for my camera!)