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.

Thailand: Monkeys in Lopburi

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

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

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

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.