Let's add a tree

More of our timbers have been added. The first two rows from the south are nearly complete.


Since I had to cut a number of trees from the site, I had hoped that a few could be used in the building. Below is a sassafras tree that was about where the master bedroom is. Most of its bark has been removed in this picture.

It is obviously not straight, so marking and cutting the notches to hold the beams was part science, part hopefulness. The top is nearest in the picture. The base on the top was temporary, to aid in marking for the cuts.


Erected and seen from this perspective the tree looks almost straight. Other perspectives show it has a few bends.

It will be in the center of the largest open area of the house. Another sassafras, also cut down from the site, will stand beside it to its north, also in the center of the large room.


Notice in the bottom picture that more timbers have arrived. These include the largest and longest beams. They will be used for the longest spans remaining to be erected, across the master bedroom.

Our hike to work

Here's another of the trails we've built on the Greene View Springs property. This one is used nearly every day for access to the new house site. It runs from near the current gardens just below the barn down into the wooded area below. Along the way you can see some cardboard on the trail. It will eventually be covered with wood chips like can be seen at the start of this clip.

This trail is rather steep once it enters the woods. It almost levels out as it turns nearly due east towards the trail in the earlier post.

Soon the house site can be seen up to the left. Farther along are stacks of trees that have been removed and saved for later use next to the end of the driveway. The clip ends where the earlier clip begins as found in the second video reference in an earlier post.

I'm embedding this video rather than linking to it. Let me know if you like this method better than the links.



One thing the camera can't show is how much cooler it is in the woods.

Let's take a short walk or two

Here are my first tries at taking and uploading videos to YouTube. The first video is a short walk onto the property on the new driveway, from the recently repaved county road to the parking area and then up a short way to the house site. I need to learn to walk without bouncing the camera.

The second is one of many trails on the Greene View Springs property. This one runs from one of the parking areas on the driveway back to the start of the driveway. One of the growing piles of stripped trees can be seen along the way. Here's another:

I hope to use most of the trees we've had to remove. The larger ones might show up in the building's structure as posts or even beams. The others will make fences and wattles for gardening and excluding some of our critter friends. A few might even become parts of a carport planned for the end of the driveway.