Rock & Roll Farm

Wednesday! Dec 08 2004 // 9:03 pm //

Starting the timber frame.

I may have failed High School Geometry, but I can now add timber framing to my resume. The wood came in last week, and of course we dropped the longest, heaviest, most green timber we could find right on Reid’s leg. He’s okay, but it was scary for a minute there. And then funny. And now legendary.

Monday and Tuesday we worked on the layout of the timbers. Each piece of the frame is designated well in advance, and all cuts are drawn directly on the wood. I learned to lay out mortises, tenons, dovetails, braces, and floor joists. Accuracy and precision has never been a strong point of mine so this was a challenging task for me. Spending time quietly measuring and marking was a nice contrast to the sometimes-violent work of the farm this time of year. Tomorrow we will begin cutting, chiseling and drilling. The thought of power tools makes me more excited than I probably should be. The thought of chisels makes me even more excited.

The structure will be a distribution shed for the CSA. One of the challenges has been what to do with the produce that doesn’t fit in the share boxes. Simply trying to keep it in the shade didn’t work. Now we can have everything in the shed, out of the elements. This will also provide some continuity to the distribution process, and lots of storage space.