March 12

technical

The timber arrived just after sun-up this morning. The first shipment = 53,000 pounds. There will be another truckload in about two weeks. This wood will be used for lintels that fit above each door and window,  beams that support the roof structure and will be exposed in the ceiling, posts for the front porch and the side porch on the West Side, and corbels. These big pieces of pine came from a saw mill in Espanola, New Mexico.

The job today is to remove the timber from the truck and place it up the road on the ground across from the building site. To do this, Steve gets out the trusty back-hoe (remember the Earth Mover breaking ground back at the beginning of this saga? Well, now it is a Timber Mover!), puts on the special timber-moving attachment, and turns into Ripley again. During this entire process, only two pieces of wood hit the ground and they only fell a few feet and were not damaged. At some points, Steve was hauling two tons of timber using this back-hoe. Three men on the truck and Steve, the back-hoe, and his trusty side-kick were all it took to move this pile of beautiful pine timber from Point A to Point B–in about 3 hours.

This story starts with the Martini Shots. Bella, Niles, and I were at the site just as the sun was rising–a first for us!