Yesterday at lunch I got a call from the neighbor to help again with bringing the straw inside and getting it stacked, 700 bails or so we unloaded but this barn from 1870 or something, I forget, its posted up there on the gable of the house in wrought iron numbers, it is unusually large, the old farmer saying 80 men were used to raise it and he is that proud to tell that his barn is bigger than most but also built with sturdy construction, (have a few photos if you like to see). I guess the main bents and the wall plates are from wood out the North American woods and must have been something in the range of size you throw out in your story. I've been eyeing them with keen interest and can just make out the axe marks. It was told to me that anyway wood from the tropics normally got squared up prior to transportation to save space and because that made for safer cargo and probably that was also the case for these timbers, so they would have been axed over there.

Three and a half feet, wow that's almost unimaginable here. This is the biggest one I have attempted lately, down there in France.
Working along that long face it gets a bit crampt in there. (You'll have to excuse me in my moth-eaten underwear, it was so hot that day. Summer's not the right time for this work, believe me.)

Last edited by Cecile en Don Wa; 08/25/15 07:10 AM.