We’ve been practicing and preparing for timber framing for twenty-five years.  Ever since our early training at Shelter Institute we’ve been gathering tools and materials, saving every timber we’ve milled until we were ready to get started on our own timber frame.  Here’s a picture of  an old barn in Madison County we once considered buying, but we just couldn’t afford to disassemble and transport it:

The character of these hand-hewn timbers is incredible.

But the fact is, timbers like these are hard to come by.  Even if you can find them, they often cost much more than a cost-conscious family can afford.  So when we learned our friends Pat and Tera had timbers available, we jumped at the chance to buy as many as we could afford.

Story begins Fall 2014 when our Conquest friend Steve let me use his trailer to move some steel Cindy received from a friend and business partner.  It was an adventure moving the two I-beams as they were welded together!  But Barber Welding, in Weedsport, NY, cut them apart!  After they were cut, Steve helped me unload them at DogWood.

Steve got thinking and decided to give us an old trailer of his to help move future materials, and this began our winter 2015 timber transport adventure!

It is quite a winter, as I know all of you know!  Here’s Pat and Tera’s big Percheron, Tully, easily pulling a gorgeous oak timber out to our trailer:

The timbers are lovely hand-hewn, solid oak. They are very heavy and it is a lot of work to get them back to our bio-shelter construction site.  But as you can tell from this picture, it is worth it!