The $10 Barn

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The New York Sun

Thrift. Making do with what is available is paramount these days. In taking over the 1799 farmhouse where I grew up, I found no lack of ways to fill the short, late fall days in Maine. The idea of building a lean-to style pole barn off the end of the house had been a bee in my bonnet for a few years, and I could smell the pollen. I needed a dry place to keep my new 1957 Ford 641 Workmaster and set to giving that red ox a suitable hovel for the impending winter.

A hundred yards up the hill behind the homestead stood an arrow straight, 80-foot tall, white pine tree that I introduced to the ground with my chainsaw in the sharp early morning light. With that wonderful tractor and a logging winch, I twitched the whole tree out of the woods and over to my work site on the other side of the house. Helped by the magic of hydraulics I was able to single handedly lift the entire tree horizontally up onto two notched stumps to get it off the ground.

In doing this, I easily (as easily as possible, I suppose) peeled all the bark off the tree with my hundred-year-old drawknife. My intent was to turn this tree into all the lumber I would need for the construction of this new weather-foiler. Peeling the bark off makes the wood resistant to rot as it takes away shelter for critters that eat dead wood.

Once I peeled the tree, I called on a friend, Ben, who came by with his 40 year old fire-breathing monster of a chainsaw. It boasted a special chain for cutting with the grain of the tree, or ripping, as it’s known. We took turns manipulating the hungry, yellow saw down the measured out chalk line dividing the tree in half, lengthwise. In mere hours we had manufactured all the beams I would need for this 10-foot by 20-foot structure, and had a good time while at it.

The next morning I began the day by notching in the rain. Well swaddled in wool, I was wet but warm and eager to keep the project moving toward completion. As with many of my building jobs, the design and plan was an evolving process, constantly in flux based on the materials with which I was working and the tools available. I measured and cut with my chainsaw the mortises and tenons for the bent, or outside wall. I cleaned up the notches with a razor sharp hand chisel called a slick.

With holes dug for all four end posts, I was ready to put that pine back up in the air. Another friend fortuitously stopped by to take a look at the buck hanging in my woodshed, and I dragooned him in to helping me hoist the two 22 foot long half trees into position on top of the vertical posts. With the skeleton complete I spent the next morning dancing light footed on the rafters like a log driver as I lay down the skin. I salvaged a bunch of old roofing and bits of lumber from a shed that a neighbor was going to burn and was able to patch together all the metal I’d need to cover the roof.

The back and the outside walls will be made of next winter’s firewood, each year new walls and weird windows. That treasured tractor now has a nice dry spot when it’s not out crawling around the woods and fields or pushing snow into piles. From standing tree to a structure that should last at least into the next century in only four days and for the cost of a pouch of pipe tobacco. The satisfaction I garner from standing under that tin roof covered in three feet of snow, smoking my aforementioned pipe and watching the wind whip by, seems worth the work in and of itself.


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