About a month ago, some volunteers from the Old Stone House visited many of the local schools and talked about the history of barn raising. They brought a miniature timber frame barn, so the students could do their own barn raising complete with wooden pegs and mallets. The miniature barn frame could be constructed and deconstructed over and over again for each class and each school. The OSH volunteers also sent home a flyer advertising the full fledged community barn raising to be held on June 9th, and Cole had been wanting to go ever since he learned about the whole thing. So that's what he, Heather, Joanie, and I did this afternoon.
WCAX has a nice story about the event which you might want to check out before looking at the rest of this post. It will give you some good background information.
I like the t-shirts the crew members wore.
Moving these huge beams was no easy task.
Notched out and ready to go. Can you imagine if something wasn't measured exactly right? How would it go together?
Watching from the shade of an apple tree.
Heather had a t-ball game in the morning. One of her coaches, Makaio Maher, was absent from the game because he is one of the builders!
There was sugar on snow.
Period costumes.
It took them over an hour to get this beam ready to raise.
Once it's up, they used a giant wooden mallet to fix it into place.
Another period costume, really nice...
...until she pulled out a digital camera. It didn't seem right somehow.
Cedric appeared out of nowhere with Susan's newly marketed Switchel. He shared it with the barn raisers to "slake their thirst."
I love the vintagey looking label. Very professional.
This is the educational minaiture barn frame I told you about before.
It's not everyday that you get to have your picture taken with the 1835 governor of Vermont.
Look for Switchel in a store near you. Way to go Susan. You've come a long way.
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Great photos, Darlene!
ReplyDelete(For some reason I am suddenly very thirsty.)
So exciting to see Susan's Switchel label and packaging!
ReplyDeleteGlad you got a chance to go to see the Barn Raising!
Great photos, so interesting! I didn't know about this project though not surprised knowing about Old School House builders, etc. Thanks for this post Darlene, I also am so tickled to see Susan's Switchel - great! Wow. Very exciting. This makes us want to come home even more!
ReplyDeleteI wish we would have gone yesterday! Tyler had graduation and then the baby had to nap... so we got off to a late start on our day. We did see the kids at the lake last night. Cole caught a fish right away! Did you try Susan's switchel?
ReplyDeleteI loved the switchel!! You could taste all the ingrediants: maple syrup, molasses, ginger...it was just delicious! The barn raising was just incredible to watch...lots of cooperation and incredible planning...
ReplyDeleteJoanie