Picturesque story, John!

Re. the stack-log firewood pile, do you play the game we architecture 
students played up here at a group-rented cabin beside the lake, the game of 
making a stack-wood corbelled dome about 10 or 12 feet in diameter, walls 
about 4 feet high, dome first, filled with firewood later.   The practise 
began after seeing the local farm tradition of stacking firewood in a domish 
pile, "to shed the water" said the farmer.   The archy students loved the 
form and decided to reverse the building process.

Would love to see yours.

cp in bc
(not enough snow for igloos, so we used fire wood logs)
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Leeke" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 9:36 AM
Subject: [BP] straw bales, ranchers' daughters


> Straw Bale:
>
> Must be something about ranchers' daughters and straw bale construction...
>
> When I was in art school in Lincoln, Nebraska, my girlfriend had me come 
> home with her, out west to the panhandle, near Chadron, over the holiday 
> break for about 4 weeks. I stayed with the "hands" out in the bunk house, 
> which was straw bale construction. I got to see "my" girl (who, back on 
> the ranch, of course, was really her daddy's girl) every morning at 
> breakfast and on Sunday afternoons. We both took a good-natured ribbing 
> from the hands. Of course, I had to work for my keep during the day, and 
> spent evenings with the hands out in the bunk house. They were a mix of 
> old weathered fence posts and young flat-bellied whipper-snappers with 
> shoulders three feet wide from tossing 90 pound hay bales all summer long 
> since they were ten. In the evening the practice was homemade 
> entertainment and everyone had to contribute. If you couldn't play an 
> instrument, sing, or tell a good story, you BECAME the entertainment. 
> Since I couldn't play or sing worth a hoot, and was way to young to have a 
> good story, I thought I was just going to read the evenings away. The 
> second night they grabbed me out of my bunk and played "blanket toss" with 
> me while old Henry scratched out a tune on his fiddle. Henry fiddled 
> faster and faster, I sailed higher and higher on each toss, loads of fun 
> for everyone. Henry began sawin' on that fiddle frenetic-like, and I 
> started touching then banging into the rafters. That seems to make them 
> happy so they left me be. The next night there was no getting out of 
> it--Blanket Toss was on the entertainment program. When they got to 
> banging into them rafters real good I got my leg and arm into the trusses 
> and just hung up there--well that brought the house down with a roar of 
> laughs and har-harin' that seemed to satisfy them all for the rest of the 
> evening. I got tangled up in those rafters and trusses more than once and 
> learned, at eye-ball range, how they were constructed. The bottom cords 
> were full-length Cottonwood logs, hewn flat on the sides. The webs were 
> old weathered Osage Orange fence posts tenoned into the cords and saddle 
> jointed into the top cords made of Cottonwood poles. Old Henry said the 
> bearings were flat planks that laid on top of the straw bale walls. The 
> walls were about 3 feet thick and the windows had a wide curved coving at 
> the sides to let in more light. Interior walls were finished with T&G wood 
> boards, exterior was finished with  stucco. Henry had helped build the 
> bunk house in 1917, he said, during an odd early October snow storm. They 
> just used what ever materials they could scrape up, hay, posts, and 
> Cottonwoods that had been planted just 30 years before with the first 
> land-grant settlement of the ranch. They got it up and finished in about a 
> week, probably quicker than otherwise, Henry thought, since they needed a 
> place to keep warm and the boss wanted them out of the house!
> Anyway, by the third night I was getting pretty beat up banging into those 
> Cottonwood trusses, and instead of reading, just happened to pull out my 
> sketch book and pencils. Turns out it was real entertaining for them to 
> watch me sketch in the evening. Then I got "easy duty" during the work day 
> when they realized I could draw them working with the horses. Once I got 
> to be friendly with those guys that bunk house seemed real warm and cozy, 
> probably due more to those 3 foot thick straw wall. Even the boss let me 
> in the big house on Saturday to draw a portrait of "his" daughter. He was 
> real pleased with his daughter for bringing me, real pleased with the 
> portrait, but as for me? Well, I could remain in the bunkhouse with the 
> hands.  When it was time to go back to school every one of those hands had 
> tacked a sketch of themselves up on the wall over their bunk. By spring 
> "my" girl and I were hiking out along the edge of town on frequent 
> "sketching trips."
>
> John (artist as a young man) Leeke
> 1968, Dawes County, Nebraska
>
>
>
> >>version of a stack-log barn wall.<<
>
> Stacked cord-wood walls is another vernacular building system. We build a 
> rustic shelter out back every other year with our firewood. I'd take a 
> picture of it for you, but this winter got an early cold start here in 
> Maine, so we've already brought in and burned half of the shelter. You can 
> get a glimpse of the shelter in the "Garden Peas" video, over here at the 
> Front Portch:
>
> http://www.historichomeworks.com/hhw/frontporch/front.htm#Peas
>
> John
>
> --
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>
> 

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