Barn Inspections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.