Jon Radojkovic

BARN IN BENTINCK TOWNSHIP, ONTARIO

2011-11-09T13:36:00.000-08:00

This 107 year old timber frame barn, now owned by Dan Weirmeir, is said to be the highest barn in former Bentinck Township, West Grey, Ontario, at about 40 feet high.
The four bent, 52 foot by 60 foot barn had an overhang on the south side which was closed in by Richard Weirmeir, who bought the Lot 15, Concession 11 NDR farm, located about 6 kilometers east of Elmwood, in 1960.
Robert Weirmeir, Richard’s son and Dan’s father, remembers helping to lay the first steel on the high pitched roof over top of the original cedar shingles about 40 years ago.
“It was real scary on the north corner as it was so high,” he said so he preferred nailing the steel on the south side where there was an “L” addition. “You had a 50/50 chance of bouncing off the addition,” Robert laughed.
At the beginning during the 1960’s and ‘70’s Richard had a mixed operation, like many of the local farmers. They built some stanchions in the high stables and milked six to ten cows and shipped cream. In the spring wiener pigs were bought, fattened all summer and sold in the fall. Beef cattle were grazed and housed in the stables during the winter. Pigs and cattle were sold at the Keady auction. Sometimes, Robert remembers, cattle buyers came by the farm with fat wallets, offering $250, $275 and even $300 per beef cow, all in cash, with $100 bills being counted over and over again until a deal was struck.
Everyone in Richard’s family, one son and two daughters, and his wife Helen (Halliday) helped with farm chores. Cows were milked by a simple ¾ inch vacuum pipeline and a portable milker, grain was bucketed down from the granary in the mow, through a chute to the pigs and cows below. Dan and Robert both remember the large high mow, full of square bales of straw on one side and hay on the other, being above the eaves of the barn.
Richard, who was a Bentinck councilor and deputy reeve for many years, did custom haying and combining with his Massey Harris Super 92 for many years. He would cut and bale first-cut hay for local farmers, then came the grain combining and then second-cut hay. “He was away a lot, and in between all that he would do our hay and grain,” Robert said. The 102 acre farm had “good land,” Robert says, with only about 3 acres of bush and 3 acres of rough land and the rest workable. Fields were divided into 4 and 6 acre parcels, and each field had different crops. “Farming was prosperous in the “70’s,” Robert remembers.
Originally inside the barn, there were two tracks for hay carriers, one at the peak and another on the north side, where the ramp came in. What is somewhat of a timber frame mystery is that all the outside bottoms of the posts of the barn have a four foot section beautifully scarf notched in as an extension. Looking at some of the timbers inside, there are used ones for the top plates, some girt connectors and the posts themselves. Since this barn wasn’t built until 1904, a previous barn on the farm could have been taken down and the timbers re-used. Perhaps the posts of the previous barn, or another in the area that was taken down, were too short and those extensions were notched in to allow a higher timber frame structure to be raised.
The roof rafters are round, signifying an earlier built barn, but could have been re-used from a previous one. The queen post timber frame, where the top of the bent has a long brace to meet the purlin, has timbers with sawmill and hand adzed marks, again indicating new and re-used timbers.
The main concrete ramp into the barn has a cistern underneath it which was filled by rainwater or by a pump from the well. This watered the cattle and pigs inside the stables. On the cement lid of the cistern are initials “W.W.” and the date, “1931.” Farmer Wilfred H. Wright owned this farm from 1922 until 1958 and was proud of the ramp and cistern he built.

Barn Inspections

2011-09-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

It’s been a great summer, although busy as usual. After a cold and rainy spring it turned hot and dry and then just as rain was urgently needed, it began to rain and has been on and off for the last month. So a good growing season as well.
It has also been a busy barn inspection season. People are mainly concerned about the well-being of their heritage barns. They see the historic value of these buildings but don’t really know how and where to start in repairing them or if it’s even worth doing it. I know when we need to make a decision about something, Lillian and I look for more information, so finding someone with the information you need to make a good decision is certainly worth the effort.
After I came back from Asia I had a number of barns to look at, the first at Fenelon Falls, Ontario, north east of Barrie. Here a young couple from the city had purchased a farm in Haliburton, home of hard scrabble farming. Still, the pioneer’s dreams were in the barn, well framed, added to with a beautiful field stone foundation. But hard farming times and a lack of concern by previous owners had left the barn in neglect yet it was still quite repairable and not yet ready for the demolitioner's hammer.
Over the summer I have inspected over a dozen barns, each one different from the other, having the individual framer’s mark notched into the frame. That’s when every barn reflected the land that surrounded it, and was built to fit that farmer’s needs. The land hasn’t changed much yet the ‘one size fits all’ thinking is certainly prevalent today, and with it the destruction of our agricultural heritage. I hope more people have the foresight to value the amazing agricultural history we have, and conserve some of those hand-built buildings, that still dot our landscape.

Vientiane, Laos

2011-02-19T23:04:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Vientiane, Laos, the capital of the country. Certainly one of the sleepiest and smallest capitals in the world. The mighty Mekong River runs by the city which also forms the border with Thailand. So much history has passed through here including many wars and the secret bombing by the US of the country where one-third of the population was killed during the 1970's because they were communist.

The city is surviving now with much of it due to tourism, where they were permitted to come into the country in 1995.

Though the city was sacked by the Thais in the 1800's some of the temples were spared and many new ones built. Some of the buildings date back to the 1500's and there is a reference to 3000 BC! The temples are different then in Thailand in some ways but the basic timber frame structure is still the same. Using round post colomns of wood or cement, they meet the horizontal timber on top. Then laterals come from the top of the post to form the outer edge of the roof, which is steep with timber rafters coming from the peak, supporting on the main columns and finishing onto outside columns. There is a nice intricate set of small timbers making a truss system of support in between the main and outside columns.

Vientiane has the french influence, (france's colony at the begiining of the 20th century) and as a result has some great French colonial style buildings. Big impressive structures with columns supporting the entranceway and big breezy rooms inside with wide plank wooden floors. One is the Settha Palace Hotel, built in 1932, abandoned in the 1970's, and totally renovated in 1995 to 2000. Not our kind of place to stay, especially at $175 per night when guest houses we slept in cost us $15. But the all rosewood floors, furniture and bar is incredible.

Historic Dinner Plate Found Under Barn Plate

2010-11-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

I was repairing an 1880 era timber frame barn near Tara, about 20 kilometers from Owen Sound. In front of the earthen and stone ramp the rock elm bottom plate was rotten in places and I was cutting out portions of it with a chain saw. This rock elm is incredible, for even though there was over 120 years of moisture and rot in it, the parts that were not rotted were still fresh and holding.
Anyway, as I pulled out some of the rock elm, it exposed the top of the stone foundation. The foundation is about 2 feet thick, and I had it repaired by a good stonemason that summer. In the middle of this foundation, where it is mainly just loose rocks, was a circular object. I picked it up, dusted it off and it was a dinner plate! Even though it had decades of ingrained dirt on it, it was still in good condition. I found out the plate was made between 1840 to 1865 in England and probably brought over by boat by the immigrant pioneers who settled this land.
I believe it was a gesture of good luck for the barn, put there by the owners when the barn was constructed over 120 years ago. I mean, it was perfect, a beautiful cream coloured plate, with wheat grain relief on the outside perimeter, placed under the bottom plate—a plate under a plate-- --never crushed by the tides of time, wagons full of hay, horses tromping over it on top of the floor, tractors later running up and down into the barn. And maybe it was good luck, for the barn had never burned down, been swept away by a tornado, or collapsed under heavy snows.

12-Sided Barn Goes UP

2010-10-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

In the first three weeks of September I travelled to Iron Bridge, near the Soo to put up the 12-sided barn I took down last year. After installing the floor joists (sleepers) in July it was now time to get the walls and timber frame structures up.
I had on average about 3 Amish and 5 or 6 volunteers everyday to do the work including myself. The walls are 20 feet high and about 16 feet wide. We built 6 of these walls on the floor of the barn and after putting them up and bracing them, we built the other 6 walls in between. This construction was originally part stud wall type and part timber post. We tried to replicate as much as possible the 1919 heritage barn contraction techniques and use as much of the old timbers and lumber as possible.
After the walls went up with the help of a crane we got busy the next week building the timber frame tower which stands in the middle of the barn. It’s 16 feet square and 33 feet high. Two of the 33 foot major posts were rotten on the ends and I cut off the bad parts of the timber and notched on new sections. As well, a cupola was built being 22 feet wide and 10 feet high, to sit on top of the tower. Original and new pole rafters (26 feet long) are then attached from the wall to the tower/cupola to make everything rigid.
With the help of a crane on a Saturday and a big crowd on hand to watch this spectacle the tower was assembled, pinned together and then craned up. It went well. The cupola was then raised 33 feet up to the top of the tower. Tense moments were on hand as it all had to fit! And it did!
We then spent the rest of the week-end installing the rest of the rafters –36 long ones and 24 shorter types. Now the roof is on and the barn board almost finished.
I had a great crew of people working there, many, many laughs and a couple of gracious hosts who put me up for three weeks. Thanks to all!
For barn enthusiasts it will officially be open next year and will be used as a hall/meeting room, museum, dances and farmer’s market. One of the last three surviving 12-sided barns in Canada, it will be a great addition to the community.

Sleepers and Amish

2010-07-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

It’s a long way to Iron Bridge, near Sault Sainte Marie, but it feels like another world there. More like a frontier, less traffic and history abounds in the form of pioneer settlements and farms still left intact.
Last year I was up there to take down a 12-sided 62-foot diameter barn and then erect it on municipal property about six miles away. This year we began the process of putting it up. Well, the foundation is poured to replicate the old one using boards and I went up there last week to help install the joists, or sleepers as they are called in barn terms. We tried to use as many of the old ones as possible, which span a distance between 20 to 25 feet. Even dry, these old timbers weighed a lot and with the use of a crane, Amish and some volunteers we managed to install about 60 old sleepers and new fresh cut red pine ones. The average size of the sleepers was about 10 inches, flat on two sides and 14 to 16 inches wide. One could not move any of them without the use of machinery and I wondered how they were installed 90 years ago when the barn was built.
I had great hosts, Will and Elaine Samis, who farm 164 acres near Iron Bridge. They both love reading and discussing everything from farm problems to the world’s philosophers and laughter was a common theme around the kitchen table.
One day I worked just with Joseph Yoder, a 20 year old Amish man, finishing up some notching on short connecting joists. He forgot his lunch and as there are no restaurants around I drove him to a small Trans Canada Highway general store that looks forgotten in time. An enthusiastic clerk greeted us and Joseph asked for bologna and a loaf of bread. Nope, they had run out of bologna, but had ham instead. Joseph was disappointed, as he really wanted bologna! Well, with a loaf of Bambi white sliced bread and ham, he managed to have a meal, while I contributed some chips and an orange. We sat in the shade eating, watching his horse graze, and laughed about the silliness of the fast world.

BACK HOME

2010-07-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve been back home at the farm for a couple of months now and am deep into fixing barns and notching timber frames. The transition was easier then before as I had gone through it three times now. But there are some things that I have noticed. First, it was really nice not to be involved in Canadian politics, compared to Thailand, it’s much more secretive here, filled with corporate inequalities and not many seem to want to be involved (apathy). I know Thailand has gone through some difficult times recently, but on the whole, as foreigner there it was refreshing not to be frustrated with the goings on of local politicians.
The other thing that I got quite used to in Thailand was seeing ancient buildings every day as a matter of course. And the reason there as still such amazing buildings left there is because the Thais care for their heritage and culture much more then we do here. Sure, we’re a new country comparatively, filled with people from different countries, but we have some beautiful 100 year old or more architecture here that not many seem to care about saving. A case in point is the Paisley Inn, northeast of Guelph or London Ontario. It’s a historically designated building over 150 years old, brick and timber frame, but the local municipal government seems bent on tearing it down. I have never heard them mention it as a heritage building once, only as “unsafe”. That was five years ago now, when warnings were posted that the building was going to fall down any day. It’s still standing and still in the courts, with the municipality still wanting it demolished. I really don’t think that tourists will want to come up here to see Tim Horton’s in its place and new subdivisions where an old barn and farm were.
But in the end, it’s good to be back, what a beautiful part of the world we have here as well.

Wats

2010-03-03T08:26:00.001-08:00

One of the best parts of this country are the amazing temples or wats that are in every little town and city and especially here in Chiang Mai where there are 300!

I found this one, a rare wooden one actually in Lampang, about an hour's drive away. Mostly made of teak, the wooden wats were made for centuries but monsoons, and termites made maintenance a big priority. When cement was discovered here 10 years ago, most became concrete and wooden wats that had suffered the ravages of time, were renovated using cement. This one, was unfortunately not even being used, and looked ready for destruction while a new shiny wat had been built just meters away. These Buddhist temples, were always housed in a compound made of a half a dozen buildings.

The amazing part about most of the wats, for me, even the concrete ones, was that the inside, the structure was of a timber frame style, where posts, either round or square were used to hold up purlins with a principle rafter roof structure.

I couldn't get inside this one, it looked like no one had been inside for a while and parts of the eaves were rotten. But look at the wonderful detail, all carved by monks at one time with some huge teak posts inside.

Now in Chiang Mai I am getting up in the morning early to beat the heat, and walking to one or two of them to photograph. After, a good strong cup of iced coffee is my reward.

Thailand: Monkeys in Lopburi

2010-02-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

Lillian and I left for Thailand a couple of weeks ago to have some fun on the beach and then take a slow train north to Chiang Mai and visit towns along the way that interest us. We’re into week three already but last week we came to a town called Lopburi. It’s a mid-sized, busy place 300 km north of Bangkok and has some very old ruins dating from the 11^th century. We got off the train down town and found a hotel room on the 4 corners of the city. It was noisy and the room was 2^nd rate but it had air con and a toilet and shower. Deluxe! It had no soap or shampoo but luckily we had brought some from the last place we had stayed in. The windows to our room were caged on the outside and we soon found out why. We heard a funny noise outside and pulled the curtains and there were three grey monkeys looking at us. In fact the monkeys were all over that part of town and we found out that Lopburi was known (beside the amazing ruins) for its wild monkey population, which numbered in the hundreds. During the day they climbed along hydro lines, down sidewalks, sometimes trying to grab pedestrian’s shopping bags, and up building walls to sit on window ledges. Being Buddhists, the local population would not harm them and put up with them while the monkeys brought in more tourist dollars as bus loads came up from Bangkok to see the ruins AND the monkeys.

The most eerie part was at night, as the monkeys all went to sleep on top of and along the walls of Lopburi’s most famous and oldest ruin, the Three Connected Towers. Shades of Kipling’s Jungle Book where in one story Mowgli gets kidnapped and taken to the ancient ruins where the monkeys reside. I just remember it as a scary story. Lopburi’s three towers were fenced and gates locked at night, as it was NOT a place where the monkeys would make someone feel welcome either, just as in Kipling’s book.

AMISH ROOFING

2009-12-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

I’ve worked with the Amish that live around me for years. They are hard working and fearless, especially doing roofing work and so on a job I had to do in October, I hired Peter to help. Peter had just turned 21, and my job was the first for him where he got to keep the money I paid him. Up until then all the money he made went into the family’s fund.
The job was to repair a barn roof where two ten-foot sheets of metal roofing had come off at about the center of the roof on the south side. We got there with my mini-van, carrying a very long ladder, some rope, a 12 volt drill for screwing the sheets down and a few other hand tools.
We decided to go up on the ladder, both of us, Peter first to see how slippery the roof metal was. Peter thought he would just walk on the roof up to where the repair was needed. As he stepped onto the roof, about 25 feet from the hard ground, I was behind him on the ladder. He said in case he started to slide down the roof, I was to hold onto the eavestrough so that the ladder and both of us wouldn’t fall down! Great! Well, he did start to slide immediately and I held on to the eavestrough and nobody fell down. Good!
Plan B was to throw a rope, with a weight, over top of the peak and tie it off on the other side. It was a bit windy but the rope and weight finally caught on the ripped part of the roof we were to repair. Peter tried his weight on the rope and said he would try it. Yup, so I did the same, held on to the eavestrough just in case. The caught rope held and Peter was then able to throw the rope from the middle of the roof over the peak from there, and I was able to tie it off on the other side. I carried the ten foot sheets of metal roofing up to him and in an hour we finished the work. It was another adventure in barn roof repair.

2010 Building Tour in Thailand

2009-10-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

CHIANG MAI AND LAMPANG BUILDING TOUR 2010 THAILAND

There are incredible historic post and beam buildings in northern Thailand and I as a timber framer and author of two books on North American barns was totally excited by what I discovered there. In 2008 and 2009 I was in Chiang Mai, Pai, Lampang, Lamphun, all located in northern Thailand in the foothills of the Himalayas, looking at and noting all the buildings that other timber frame and building enthusiasts would like to see.
These structures including wooden and stone temples, historically preserved buildings and wooden post row houses, are all between 1,000 and 100 years old. And what amazed me is that most of these buildings are of the post and beam type similar to what we have here in Eastern Canada and USA and also Europe. In fact the similarity is uncanny between European barns built 500 years ago in the post and beam style and temples in the Chiang Mai area also constructed 500 years ago. Who learned from whom or did they both originate organically? You can be the judge if you join the tour beginning on February 14, 2010 and continuing for a full week until February 20, 2010.
The tour includes all accommodation, ( Banthai Village) which will be 7 nights in Chiang Mai, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants and 1 night in Lampang, a small river town. As well lunch is included and supper as every night all tour participants will enjoy fantastic food at a Thai restaurant located in an architecturally interesting building. Everyone will also receive a cell phone and map of the city, for fun and to keep in touch.
Each morning to early afternoon we will tour a range of building types, including timber frames, 500 to 1,000-year old wooden and stone temples and historically preserved stilt houses.
On day 5 we will travel to the town of Lampang, via the Teak Tree Highway, a two lane paved road lined with hundreds and hundreds of stunning 100 foot teak trees. On the way we will visit an early Lanna stone temple in Lamphun and stay overnight in Lampang. This ancient, quiet town, which was a hub of the teak tree trade in the late 18th century, has a preserved downtown of wooden post row houses and elegant 19th century Chinese manor buildings by the river and an incredible stilt house museum.
During the afternoons participants will be free to wander Chiang Mai, a centre famous for tribal markets featuring silks, cottons, woodworking, paintings, gold and silver jewelry and an unbelievable variety of clothing. What most people also remember is the amazing variety of food available—from street vendors to 5 star restaurants—Chiang Mai is provided for with fresh vegetables, exotic just picked fruits, fresh water fish, meat and the famous noodle soups. It’s a cosmopolitan city and all the amenities are available such as internet cafes, money exchanges, Interac, Visa and MasterCard, and espresso cafes for coffee lovers.
Please join me and my wife Lillian, our Thai friend and interpreter, Ferne, our friendly 12-seat late model van driver and guides who will tell us more about the architecture and history of this fascinating country.
Our tour is being handled by Debbie at Laramie Travel, who has been to Chiang Mai and surrounding region many times and knows personally how the city works and what kind of accommodations to book. She can also book an extended trip for you since Chiang Mai is located in the Golden triangle—where Thailand, Burma and Laos meet and where China, Cambodia and Vietnam are all within an hour’s flight away. deb@laramietravel.com
Fees for the tour will be $2,150, plus air fare, hope to see you in Chiang Mai in 2010.
Accommodations: We've found a wonderful small hotel in Chiang Mai, the Banthai Village. It opened two years ago, is beautiful and calm, located in a laneway behind a temple (Wat Bupparam) and only a five minute walk from the apartments where Lillian and I will be staying.
There is also an incredible cooking/food tour in Chiang Mai two weeks before mine, beginning January 24 to February 1, 2010. Look it up at immersethrough.com, it’s amazing!

Taking Down 12-Sided Barn

2009-09-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

I have taken down barns before, usually to use some of the timbers for another building project. But last winter I was asked to take a barn down this summer (August) and put it back again five miles away. (Here is the original photo of when it was built in 1919.)
This was no usual timber frame barn but a 90-year old 12-sided historic barn located up north on the north shore of Lake Huron near a little town called Sowerby, which is near and politically part of the bigger town of Iron Bridge. There are only three 12-sided barns left in Canada, and two were located 1 mile apart (one of which I was taking down) and the third is in Mystic, Quebec, which is on the front cover of my second book, Barn Building.
I accepted of course, for here was a challenge and a chance at discovering how it was built and how I was going to rebuild it, which was to be in the summer of 2010.
I drove up with a car load of tools and stayed with Will and Elaine Samis, both wonderful, intellectually stimulating people, who also farmed 100 head of beef. Boy we had some great conversations around the dinner table late into the night.
The barn is 62 feet in diameter and about 40 feet high. Not a small building. It was situated right off the Trans-Canada highway, was owned by a family who had given it the Municipality of Huron Shores to have it put back up and used as a meeting and dance hall, museum, art exhibition, sales barn, auction house, farm market etc.
Luckily some of my Amish neighbours from where I live had moved up in there and were willing to help take it down, along with some volunteers. I drew up a schedule of what I thought would be a reasonable time to do things and got to it the second day I was there. With three Amish on the roof, Toby, Mehlan and Joseph and volunteer Gary, and others on the ground we began taking off the sheets of steel. We finished that day and it was hot work. The next day we finished banging off all the boards below the metal that were covering most of the roof. Third day, still hot, we took off all 26 tamarack rafter poles, about 28 ft long each and another 24 rafter supports. That was a fun day, as we lowered one side of the rafter by rope to the floor and then the other side. Some of the rafters were thicker and I flew into the air, holding on to the end of the rope a few times, as it was heavier then me as I lowered them down. Whee!
That was the end of that week and on Monday, an extremely hot muggy day, we managed to bang off all the outside barn boards. Now it was time for the crane.
Kelly and his dad both volunteered their time to operate the 110 ft crane, which was donated for free for 2 days. We began by tearing off wall sections as they were nailed (I later found out with 8 inch nails!) at many different places. We got a method going and finally finished that day. All that was left standing was the tower.
The tower is a 35 foot timber frame structure in the middle of the barn, 16 ft square, which was made up of mostly 10 by 10 pines. The next day Kelly clambered up (I had to convince him to take a safety line up with him!) and he hooked it up to the crane , got off and we slowly began to lift the whole thing up. No problem. The tower was then lowered onto the grass on its side and we began pounding the pins out and lifting off by crane each piece. But in the middle of all this, when we had lowered the tower, Kelly said why don’t we transport the ring on top to the new site today. Now. He had a transport truck and flat bed trailer and he could do it.
The ring is a 22-foot wide 12-sided top to the tower which takes in all the rafters and could be disconnected, which we did promptly. It weighed about 400 pounds and Kelly guided it onto the flat bed with the crane. Now the problem is that usually a 22-foot wide object transported on the road is too wide (lanes are 11 feet wide) and you need permits and a police escort to do this. And also we had to travel on the Trans Canada highway, for just one kilometer and then take side roads, but still. Anyway, this is the north after all, and everyone got busy, Kelly got into the truck and pulled up the highway, while Will went to the top of the hill, cell phone in hand to tell me when Kelly could pull out. “OK, after this white truck,” he said. Looking the other way though was a Winnebago approaching. Gary quickly ran out into the middle of the 4 lane road (passing lanes on both sides) and stopped the Winnebago, who was not happy, and Kelly pulled out. From there everything went smoothly and they unloaded at the other end. Yay! Meanwhile we kept on working and finished taking apart the tower.
The next day we pulled out the sleepers (joists) and were officially finished after stacking and covering all the material. I had a lot of laughs with the Amish and great cooperation and help with all the volunteers, including David, Ron, Will and others. Thanks for a good job. Now we wait until next year to put it back up, with lots more new lumber and more adventures, I’m sure.

Third Reprint and Photo Show

2009-06-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

Spring in Grey County and so far it’s been a cool one. Every time it rains, which we need as it has been dry, it gets cold, and our shiitake mushrooms stay in the logs, waiting for warmth. Lillian is planting the last of our dry beans today, and even though it’s sunny it’s only 7 degrees Celsius now!
Last week my Brucedale Press publisher, Anne Judd, came out with the third reprint of my first book, “Barns of the Queen’s Bush.” There was a re-launch at an author’s get-together in Port Elgin and I have to thank Anne so much as it was she who took a chance on a first time author.
As well, my photo show from my second book, Barn Building, can be seen all summer at the Wellington Museum and Art Gallery, between Fergus and Elora. The museum building is a remarkable three story stone building that used to be the House of Refuge for the poor and disadvantaged people during the 19th century. There was a barn built there in the 1870’s where the people who lived there could also raise livestock and grow food. The barn is featured in my second book.
The photo show is of 12 colour prints, one of the rural landscape in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, some of round barns (such as the photo above in Ohio), and another of our friends farm in Vermont and their sunflower field, wind tower and timber frame barn built in the 1980’s. The photos can be seen in a room upstairs until the end of September. There are many other interesting art and historic shows to be seen there also and Elora is a great one day get-away, although the week-ends are getting a little too crowded for me.

The PEG in Thailand

2009-05-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

Rushing into spring work here-- shiitake mushroom log inoculation, cutting firewood, field and garden work-- has given me time to sift my thoughts about the timber frame buildings I found in and around Chiang Mai and Lampang, Thailand.
There was an abundance of them and so many historic ones. It must have been amazing there when teak trees were in abundance and the houses were being constructed by craftsmen using timber frame joinery from that resilient wood. Joinery that I have not seen here in Canada or the USA, but nevertheless, different forms of tenons, mortises, scarf joints for long timbers, braces, all pegged with a hardwood I didn’t know. And then the adze marks, just like here, but made there by skilled hands hundreds of years before we even came to what is now Grey and Bruce County in Ontario’s Georgian Bay/Huron Lake region. I was thrilled when I saw this on the outside wall of a 400 year old temple that was being renovated. And a wooden PEG on another temple where the outside timbers were exposed due to repair.
Richard, our friend who also came to Thailand with Lillian and I, did kid me a bit that I got excited about adze marks on old wooden beams and finding pegs in timbers, but, oh it was everything for me.
The century old teak house residences that have survived, either as a museum or built by a person of means, were all wood. And I mean everything from the walls, floors, ceilings and outside porches. All a deep, luxurious colour red of the teak, resilient to wind and water for decades, even the monsoons of late summer.
Our timber frames here in the snow farm belts, had to withstand just as extreme weather-- blizzards, wind and rain, and withstood the test just as well I think. No, the most dangerous enemy of historic buildings is not weather—but us. But, I’ll talk about that some other time.
Even with Thai governments of the time having protectionist practices for its immense forests, the outside world, China at the beginning and England later bought out the lumber and created such a demand that by the 1950’s, it was all mostly gone. But, wow, the wooden buildings from that 500-year era of building is still to be seen from the hundreds of incredible column temples dating back centuries, to the small city downtowns lined with century-old two-story wooden row buildings.
In Chiang Mai I discovered that along the river were some of the oldest and most preserved historic teak buildings. At Wat Kate I found an old teak temple, in rough shape holding not the statue of Buddha anymore but a museum of just about everything—from Thai lettered Underwood typewriters and radios to amazing silk cloths and old hand tools and hundreds of other relics. Plus hundreds of old black and white photos all nicely pinned up on boards. I went there three times!
In the famous river districts of the towns of Lamphum, and especially in Lampang, a small city about 100 kilometers away from Chiang Mai there were rows and rows of 100 year-old wooden 2 and 3 story building with store fronts on the street level still preserved and being lived in. Most of the buildings are like our post and beam style using smaller beams and some regular 2x4 lumber. The second and third floors were residences with long wavy balconies filled with laundry hanging on inner lines, plants overflowing below the rails and people sitting and talking. The bottom of the buildings, which were protected from rain by the balconies above, had rows and rows of louvered wooden doors opening as stores during the day.
There is lots more, but I have a good idea now of what each day would look like for a week-long timber frame and historic building tour of the area, and am working on shaping that tour to a nice workable form.
But today it’s spring work here on the farm, so much green.

Bus Trip In Thailand

2009-03-29T06:30:00.000-07:00

THE BUS TRIP IN THAIALAND Jon Radojkovic
After three weeks in the northern city of Chiang Mai, where there are over 300 amazing post and beam type temples, many hundreds of years old and mostly teak, I decided to take a bus trip to the smaller town of Lampang, about 120 kilometers to the south to see if I could find post and beam houses that people lived and worked in.
There are many types of taxi and public transportation here, beginning with the rickshaw, where a man cycles a two-person three-wheeled taxi. The next is the auto rickshaw, or what they call here a tuk tuk. This is a three wheeled motorcycle, an updated version of the rickshaw and is good for two or three people to ride in. The next step up is a pick-up truck, with a high top on the back, where people riding sit facing each other and can take up to a dozen people, and when really full, passengers can also stand on the back bumper. Not for the feint of heart. The pick-ups act as local busses with regular routes or can be hired as taxis.
Busses in Thailand come in different shapes and sizes. First there are the modern tourist ones, that don’t have any regular routes, but are for hire and carry tourists in air conditioned coaches with TV’s and tinted windows that pick you up at your air-conditioned hotel and usual drop you off at another. I don’t prefer them because a person really doesn’t get the benefit of experiencing a country this way. You might as well stay home, avoid all the costs and watch a documentary on that country on the Discovery channel. Enough said.
On my trip to Lampang I took all the above mentioned transportation, except the tourist one. First thing in the morning I stopped one of hundreds of tuk tuks in Chiang Mai, and got a ride to the Lamphun bus stop, another smaller town where I would look at buildings and spend my first night. The “bus” was a red pick-up where I sat facing a woman Buddha monk, all dressed in white and hair shaven. She was a university graduate who spoke some English. We travelled the 25 kilometers along a road that was lined most of the way with 30-meter high teak trees on either side. Just beautiful and great photography material.
When I arrived in Lamphun the only taxis were the rickshaws, and I hired one to drive me to a hotel I had found in a travel guide I carried with me. The driver was older, skinny, almost toothless, but with legs that were like small tree trunks. It was about noon, sunny and about 38 degrees Celsius. We drove out of town along narrow country roads for a while until we arrived at what seemed like palatial grounds, with lots of trees and lawns, not what I expected of the hotel from the travel guide. After I paid the rickshaw driver and he left, I discovered it was not a hotel at all but a Buddhist sanctuary!
There were some exceptional buildings there though so I took the opportunity to photograph them and then took to the dusty road walking with a backpack and soon found a busy highway. After about one-half hour of walking and sweating I spied a pick-up taxi, hailed him down, and through mostly sign language he took me finally to the hotel I was looking for, where I found a good shower and some rest.
The next day, after I photographed an exceptional 550 year old wooden timber frame temple, I found my way back to the bus station where I took a Thai public transport bus, running on diesel and painted with bright colours. It cost me 36 baht or about $1.20 to go to Lampang, some 100 kilometers away.
The bus was full-- older folks, teenagers going to a bigger city and lots of children who were all well behaved. Recessed into the ceiling of the bus were about six small fans, which quit working every time the bus slowed down and began to climb a hill. The windows all opened and you could stick your arm out like a car, which was nice as it was really hot. At the front of the bus there were all kinds of good luck charms dangling from the ceiling, including a disco ball, a stuffed tiger, keys, and rubber dolls. Pictures adorned the sides, with the king of Thailand most prominent (the people of Thailand adore their king), a monkey, photos of the driver’s family I presumed and a kitchen clock showing the right time with a picture of, what else, the king on the face.
Climbing the hills (the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains) was slow but barreling down the other side was scary, so I wasn’t sure what I preferred. But I did like travelling like this, as it showed the true human face of the country I was privileged to be visiting. Oh, and the wooden buildings in Lampang, where I stayed for four days, were definitely worth taking a Thai bus to.

In Thailand

2009-03-03T01:14:00.000-08:00

After 2 weeks in Chiang Mai, Thailand, one of our favourite things here is the food. There is quite a large variety in vegetable, fruit and meat. But what really counts is freshness. In our restaurants back home the food comes mainly in pails from Sysco or some other corporate giant. Here, it comes from the farmer’s markets that abound, from the markets gardens that are everywhere, supplying the type of food that everyone here expects to eat—fresh. Try and put some pailed food in front of them and I am sure it would be unanimously turned down.
So, every day, we go out to eat, because it is cheap, but excellent in quality. And people here are eating small amounts but more often. Little sidewalk food vendors with Pad Thai, grilled chicken, pork on a stick, mango shakes blended before your eyes, papaya salads, stir fried red rice with bits of sweet pea stalks, garlic and one of our favourites noodle soup with veggies, bits of chicken and seafood balls. I am gaining weight!
The other amazing thing is here is the cloth. Silks made in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China. Cotton from the same countries, bright colours, batik, dyed with indigo and other natural dyes, and intricately embroidered Lisu handbags, dresses and tops.
Chiang Mai is certainly the hub for the 6 tribal areas in the north who come down to the markets in this city and sell their crafts and art. And we get to benefit form their wonderful, sometimes centuries old traditional wares. This morning we walked through the day market part of CM and found a small street where there must have been about 30 stores piled high with hundreds of varieties of material, from silk to hemp. Lillian had a hard time choosing, but boy did she have fun. Will write more next time about buildings. So much to get excited about.

Leaving for Thailand

2009-02-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

Well, the day has finally arrived and Lillian and I are off to Thailand tomorrow. I am staying until the end of March and Lillian until the middle. The first thing is to have a good, relaxing time. Have some fun, sit in cafes, listen to music and smile a lot.
The other thing is to go exploring. We are based out of Chiang Mai, in the north and staying at Jeffrey and Naomi’s condo there. So many thanks for letting us stay and introducing us to Thailand. I had such great experiences there last year—the food, the people, the weather, especially the food, wow.
And for me one of the best discoveries was the timber frame buildings in Chiang Mai and surrounding area, from temples to ordinary wooden teak houses. I plan on taking a lot of photos for a possible book in the future and to possibly lead a tour of the amazing buildings in that region.
Our friend Richard Spandlik is coming with us and staying at a hotel next door to our condo. Should be fun. I can already picture us sitting at night, outside in the Sunshine Café, eating sandwiches and having abundant conversations with all the interesting people who come there every night. Oh, the air will be so soft and warm, looking forward to it.
As well, Chiang Mai is known for its markets—the day market, the night and Sunday market. Tribal people come down form the north and sell their wares and food. So amazing. Talk to you from there next time!

Terrible Barn Wind

2009-02-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

Mid December, 2008, was a terrible day. The snow wasn’t falling for a change but the wind was blowing and gusting up to 100 kilometers per hour. Trees and branches broke, roofs blew off older buildings and many century-old barns were damaged or destroyed.
Just in the Grey county area of Ontario where I live, I have come across many barns that were affected and had many calls after that windy day. A brand new metal roof blew away from a barn I had worked on in Euphrasia Township, near the Beaver Valley. The barn next door to the west side had completely collapsed. In my neighbourhood, two barns were damaged between Scone and Elmwood. On one the straw barn fell down completely, tearing away from the main barn and another, just down the road, collapsed. The problem was that there was a large amount of snow on these barn roofs, combined with the fact that it had gotten warmer and so the snow became heavy. It was actually top heavy and for some of those barns with rotten posts, either at the top or bottom, or girts that were pulling out of their connections, the snow load and wind became too much.
On that day I happened to be at my neighbour’s farm, storing one of my tractors in his barn for the winter. The wind was creating a lot of noise inside the 128 year old structure, which I had repaired a few years ago. I was looking up at the inside of the roof when I noticed that a large section, including the rafters and boards, about 30 feet long, was being lifted up by the wind. Every time the wind gusted, the roof lifted. The owner was there, as well as two of my sons, and we quickly tied heavy ropes to the inside of the rafters and then down to a solid post. Just in time, otherwise the roof would have gone. Funny now, but when the owner was hanging on to the rope, while we were nailing supports for it, he was being lifted up with the wind gusts.
There are many more barns I have seen damaged or collapsed since then, and I have realized it was a memorable storm that leveled many a historic barn. The one in the photo is near Berkley, Ontario. If anyone else can tell me about their area and how many barns were damaged, it would be greatly appreciated.

Only Three Twelve Sided Barns in Canada

2008-12-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

In Canada there are only 3-twelve sided barns. (There are many more in the USA). One is in the province of Quebec in the little historic village of Mystic. That barn, which is on the front cover of my latest book, "Barn Building," has many extraordinary features. Not only has it twelve sides but it has twelve distinct roofs as well. You can see and read more about that one in my book.

The other two are located in the north, near Iron Bridge, Ontario, which is haflway between Sudbury and Sault Ste marie. Now what are two complicated barns doing up north where Lake Huron's warming affects give farmers a short growing season and the Canadian Shield, starting just north of the lake, prevents anymore farming altogether.

The three barn's construction are related, so the story goes which is gathered from a few different sources. While the Mystic barn was built in 1882, one of the workers there moved all the way to the Iron Bridge area and built this 62-foot diameter barn pictured here in 1919. One of his workers who helped, then built the 3rd 12-sided barn about 1 mile away in 1928. Amazing how these things work out and are related.

The period beginning in 1900 was a boom time for towns and farmers in this area as the last of the great pine forests growing there were being cut down to build the cities of North America. Farmers had huge demands not only for produce and meat, but hay and grain to feed the hundreds of horses needed to log the bushes in the surrounding areas. By the 1920's it was all over, most of the good pockets of pine were logged out and then the Great Depression came, wiping out demand.

Luckily both barns are still standing and I was fortunate to have been invited on the annual barn tour up there by farmer and organizer Will Samis. "Barns are our biggest antiques," Will says. He is so right. And there is an effort to save this barn and move it down the road about 10 miles to the hamlet of Sowerby as a meeting place, dance hall, art display, antique impliment display-- a kind of museum with a social flair. The owners of the barn don't farm and don't really want it and have given to the local Heritage Farm Building tour buffs. They recieved a grant from the Ministry of Culture to take the barn down, preserve all the working timber frame pieces, and put it back up.

And, I have been asked to supervise and organize this event. Oh boy, what a fantastic challenge. And here is another coincidence. My Amish neighbour, who made the windows for my house 10 years ago and has tons of building expeience, moved up to Iron Bridge last year. I got to visit with him and his family when I was there. So... I've asked him and his brothers to help with the barn, and even though they are very busy carving a new life out of this northern frontier, he wrote me a letter recently saying he would help. It's going to be a great challenge, but fun for all as well. We'll see this summer.

THE BIG QUESTION: WHICH CAME FIRST?

2008-11-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

Timber frame construction is not only a North American phenomenon. Where it originated from we may never know, but in my next project I am going to try and find some of the oldest buildings constructed in the post and beam style.
Of course Europe comes to mind when we think of old timber frames, which is where our structures came from although we adapted them to meet our needs. There are incredible timber frame barn buildings in England, Holland, France and Germany that were built over 600 to 800 years ago and are still standing. Timber framing was not only restricted to barn building, but was also used extensively in house and factory construction. Just look at my local area here in Grey County, Ontario, Canada. Most of the century old factories are made from massive timbers, with a façade of bricks or stones while some houses show nice small timbers holding up the roof and even the plaster and lathing inside.
What we perhaps don’t think about much is the fact that timber frames were just as common in Asia, and in particular, Southeast Asia. Why? Well, the biggest reason for building any of these large timber structures is the abundance of big trees. Burma, Thailand, Laos and south western China, all had a large supply of trees at one time and some like Burma still do.
This brings me to my next project. Last winter in February ’08 I travelled to the north part of Thailand to a city called Chiang Mai. Located at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountain range there was an abundance of tall straight trees, mostly teak, up until only 40 years ago. For centuries people in this region built their temples, houses and agricultural buildings, as post and beam structures. Beautiful, incredible large and small, some of these buildings, especially Buddhist temples have stood the test of time and are still standing.
There are as well, more recently built houses, within the last 100 years that used timber frame notching techniques much like our own. These houses used for living in, are mostly built from teak. That includes the boards for the outside walls, stairs, and of course the structures themselves. Just amazing.
It’s the temples I saw, some over 600 years old, that used large timbers, some round, some intricately carved, that are most abundant. But even in the agricultural areas, there were still some buildings there that are obviously timber frames.
Today, since most of the trees are gone, concrete is the building mode there, for residential and commercial. Locals told me the bugs don’t eat the wood, it doesn’t rot and is super strong.
This winter I’m going back to Thailand and plan on travelling in the northern part, to take photos and interview people who know about the structures I find. Perhaps another book in the near future.
The big question is: who thought of timber frames first-- the Europeans or the Asians. I hope to find out.

Raising a Timber Frame

2008-11-12T17:56:00.000-08:00

Raising a timber frame
This past summer I worked on a recycled timber frame that had been built in the 1980’s as an addition to an old farmhouse. In 2005 the house had extensive fire damage and the timber frame addition, for the most part sustained smoke damage. I bought the frame after some stud framers, who didn’t know what they were doing, took it down, damaging many parts of it.
But still, it was a nice frame, being about 30 feet by 30 feet with three bents and some nice heavy principle raters and purlins.
I sold the frame to the Weyman family near Eugenia, Ontario. They wanted it as a studio, but really it’s a second home to their week-end farm get-away place.
The frame needed some work, a couple of girts that were damaged by the fire, two bents needed a king post instead of the Queen posts that were there but inadequate (according to the engineer) and a lot of sanding. My oldest son, Skyler, did most of the sanding as a summer job, while he was here last June and July. The smoke from the fire had darkened all the timbers, but really in the end, sanding couldn’t take it away, but it sure gave the pine frame a beautiful patina.
My friend Milan helped me notch some of the new timbers in August and we were finally ready for the raising in September. Milan and I readied the frame by first putting the 3 bents together on the first floor deck. They were massive bents, some of the timbers, such as the principle rafters, were 10 inch by 12 inch by 26 feet long. Just to move them on the deck required more then two of us, and we often asked for help from the other crew that was there, who I had hired to put the stress skin panels together.
After 2 weeks of hot sunny weather the day I had scheduled to raise the bents … was raining! And so was the next day and the next, and in fact the whole week was a write off. Each day I had to call the 5 crew members, the crane operator and the owners. Finally on an overcast but not raining Monday, we raised the frame and it all fit! I had, up to that point not ever seen the frame up and really had not known if I had all the pieces there( being over 100 pieces of timber and braces)! All in all a good raising, and for timber framers, the most satisfying time, seeing it all fit together after weeks of work.

Amazing Rebuilt Stone Barn Foundation

2008-11-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

My first blog

2008-11-02T19:15:00.000-08:00

hey this is so cool. So much change happens every day and this way i'll be able to write about it.