Knockin' Doors in the Country

We have a LOT of pictures today. Quick story, then we'll tear into some sweet build-age. The "Cackalack Coop" folks are getting a custom-built, all natural, locally-harvested-material coop, by request (but also by default because that's pretty much how it works out anyway). I suggested using natural locust or cedar posts, instead of pressure treated posts, since the coop is all natural and so forth. They thought it sounded pretty cool and went for it; meaning, they called my bluff and I had to scramble all over the place trying to find some cedar trees to cut down! I'm joking, mostly. Cedar trees grow all over the place, usually in neglected, overgrown fields, fence rows, gnarly hillsides, etc. They have a habit of running the show and pushing all other vegetation out of business. Cedars are basically the mafia of the forest. In fact, their reputation is so far-reaching that even insects leave them alone. The creepiest, nastiest things in the forest, don't fool with the cedar trees, not even dead ones. For this reason, and none other, cedar makes awesome fencepost (or any other kind of post) material. It just doesn't get eaten by bugs.
I started making calls when I realized I was going to need a few of these trees. No one seemed to have any (either that or they all shuddered at the thought of me on their property with a chainsaw and straight-up lied to me). The best lead I had was from a friend, who informed me that the hillside across from the new brewery in Lexington, which was being logged, had a big huge pile of cedar that the loggers weren't taking. "Perfect", I thought, "this is it". I loaded up Betsy the next day and went looking for it, clearly seeing the hill in the distance, but never quite being able to drive directly to it.
After the third or fourth breathtaking country lane, I had whittled my search down to 2 or 3 driveways. The first house was empty, so I tried the second. I didn't know which house, if any, was home to the folks who owned the hill, but I thought it worth a try. When I knocked on the second door, I heard a rustling inside before waiting at least 1 minute for the door to open. I met the confused face of a sweet older woman. "Hi! My name's F.W., you don't know me from Adam..." "No. I don't", replied the woman. "I'm just trying to find out who owns this property back here that's being cut." "Oh!" she responded cheerily, as if suddenly realizing what perfect sense it made that I had driven up their long, rutted driveway to ask this question. "All that back through there is the Old BV Racetrack. So and so owns the property still, but her daughter lives on it now, they were going to put a softball field in there but everybody fought it, the lights, the speakers, and we only have one softball team in the county... So and so's daughter teaches over at such and such school..." this went on for 15 minutes before I discovered that my sweet find had been bulldozed into a pile and burned (cue Price is Right sound clip). WUH-wuh-wuh Waaaaaa....
Anyway, I'm sharing this because it's part of the adventure. Cedar poles don't just grow on trees, well... no, I guess they do actually, but those trees don't just grow anywhere (you can totally disregard the 7th sentence of this post, I lied). I seriously love that we live in a place where it doesn't seem so crazy to knock on a stranger's door and get 15 minutes of local history. Restless and slightly discouraged, I finally called my awesome neighbors, who invited me over to cut a few small trees on their property, the round trip totaled about 3/8 of a mile and took maybe 20 minutes. I've got some spots lined up for future harvests, maybe I can stockpile some material for future builds.
OK, without further ado: pictures

Since we're basically putting knobby logs into the corners, I'm building backwards. The boxes will be like rims that all the boards for the wall are attached to. I need them to sorta temporarily "float" where they are supposed to be later, so I can shape the logs to fit into the corners, make sense?

My corner office with a view, probably answering an email while trying not to curse the tiny buttons that hide from my plus-size fingers like I'm playing some sort of twisted, alphabet whack-a-mole game.

I want to brace the bijeebies out of this mess so that nothing moves around when I'm setting the logs.

This is what two 15' - 20' cedars will get you, check out the red heart wood.

This is a real deal antique drawknife. I got it at the antique mall and sharpened it back up, works like new.

A friend stopped by, we were probably discussing my future career as a plus-size model for the K-Mart catalog.

This is how you win at babysitting.

This pile is now significantly larger. You have to shave, peel or scrape all the bark and sapwood (layer between bark and last year's growth) off to get down to the real wood. The outer stuff I just mentioned is where all the sugars are, which is what the bugs are after.

If you keep your chainsaw sharp, you get shavings when you cut, instead of powder. I love seeing the red cedar.

It smells good too.

In case you had any doubts about the structural integrity of this thing, that's me up on the frame. It only gets stronger as all the boards go up. Each one is solid 5/4" oak, screwed into the frame. Strong like bull.

Quittin' time is when I get too tired to make good decisions, tonight it was 10-ish. Here you can see the boards are up, most of them. The door needs to be made and the windows cut out. The batten strips need to be made and screwed down as well. I'll explain what they do later.

The logs will be cut off with the rest of the excess when we do the roof.

 When I'm finished, it will look like I knew what I was doing.

-F.W.

Up next (more like in a couple days), Georgie and I are gonna button this thing up, load Old Betsy and hit the road. That will be a cool post, check back!