Monday, June 18, 2012

Longhouse, day 1

Last week we began our Longhouse construction project. (The weather finally cooperated!) We invited a few other families to join us, because Longhouse building is a community project, and because it's just more fun to do things with friends! So we headed into the woods to identify which trees to cut.


We used several methods for cutting. Above, J uses a hatchet, and below a bow saw, to take down young trees of the right size. (The Map Man took the day off from work to supervise the use of the hatchet, and to take down a few of the larger trees for us.)


Below, Zoo Boy uses a pair of loppers to take out a sapling that will make a good arch for the roof. All of the kids had a chance to use each type of tool for cutting, and we took out about 50 young trees in all to use for our project, in addition to another 50 or so seedlings and saplings that were too small for us, but needed to be cut (this improved the health of the stand of trees by leaving them with less competition for nutrients, so was good forestry in addition to providing us with our building materials).


Below, we all then dragged all of the trees to our working site.


It was a good start to the project!

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