Dustin Everett

Hey Jay!

Very cool reading your posts - you guys sound like great folks, with a lot of common interests to our own. We (my wife and I) are on a similar track - we have a small house with some land in Ontario. We convinced our friends to move in with us 3 years ago. Its been awesome to have a nucleus of intentional community here at our place. We're kinda sorta interested in having more people come out to live, but also a little gun shy after some not-so-great experiences. Anyways I'm keen to hear how things go for you guys out east.

If you're passing through Eastern Ontario, stop by for some homemade cider (haskaps aren't producing enough for winemaking yet!)

Howdy all - I will admit, I am unashamedly here to qualify myself for Mark's book :) but I do have a question about coppicing old/big trees.

Specifically I have a very tall Populus tree on my property. IT is getting to the point where it is dropping quite large branches from ~70 feet up, and there are some cracks developing in some larger crotches. Is there any chance of slowly, over the course of some years, cutting and pruning this old one into a coppiced or pollarded tree?

With the increased incidence and severity of windstorms, I fear its only a matter of time before this tree is blown over or snapped, as its in savanna and is the tallest thing for ~ 100 meters in all directions. It would be great to be able to keep this one growing for decades to come.

Thanks!

It's been a loooong time since I've been onto the permies forums while signed into my account - imagine my surprise to see responses to this thread from 6 years ago - too cool!

John, Bill, Jean and William - thank you for your thoughts and ideas - John I have the book you suggest, and a shed was top of my list to build when we moved onto the property. Other things took priority and its fallen lower on the priorities scale, but still something I would like to do.

Huxley Harter
Post 2020-05-06 5:42:15 p.m.     Subject: Timber Framing as a Career - Where to Start?
Dustin where are you now in your building pursuits? How are things turning out for you?

Well my life has taken a different path, as is prone to happen to me it seems :) I bought a house with some land about 3 years ago. I had always thought I'd never get a mortgage I couldn't pay off in a couple years... well that has changed! Along with the mortgage came a desk job. So I have taken a step back on the 'dream career' path, but a few steps forward on the 'dream land/homestead/future-self-employment-potential path' :)

Our friends from the City are moving in with us, and are looking to build a cabin here over the summer. Another gentleman put up a yurt on our land last summer. Our little informal ecovllage is growing... its pretty exciting.

I am still interested in natural building, carpentry, joinery as a trade. Some days I get worried that I'm getting too old to start a new career, and that it will be too late to 'master' a craft starting in my mid-thirties... and then most of the time I tell that part of my brain to chill the 'f' out and go with the flow. Ultimately I am feeling around for some sort of 'right livelihood', a way to sustain myself and my family without causing undue harm to the ecosystems that support us (and ultimately have a net positive impact). I think I would be happy doing anything that fits this criteria - whether thats building, growing food, or something completely different I stumble upon in the future.

p.s. Thanks to all of you for making this online community so rich! Always tempting to spend more time here, reading and learning.

Interesting article from the Telegraph on the carbon produced by a Google search (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/4217055/Two-Google-searches-produce-same-CO2-as-boiling-a-kettle.html)
Estimates vary from 0.2 grams to 10 grams per search.


At 3.5 billion searches per day (www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/) thats between 700000000 grams (700 metric tons) and 35000000000 grams (35000 metric tons) of carbon per day. Just for Google. Holy smokes!

Permie Press

The Periodic Permie

Hey Bill,

Thank you for your reply. Truth be told you made me sincerely re-evaluate my ideas / thoughts / plans. Two or so years ago I approached a couple of natural building / timber framing companies about working for them, but didn't have much luck. I suppose after that experience I resigned myself to the idea that I would need formal training before I started working in earnest. It seems that assumption remained unchallenged until I read your post. Thank you!

I've begun dreaming about setting up on a nice treed piece of land, with a chainsaw, some hand tools, and my stack of woodworking and timberframing books, and spending a month or two working with green wood. In my fantasy I gain a solid understanding of the fundamentals, build a little roundwood hut with wattle and daub walls and a thatch roof. Afterwards I go around to those cool people I'd want to work for, proudly showing pictures of my structure, and they say "Hey! Welcome aboard! You're hired!"

In my mind for the price of the courses I'm considering (~$5k Canadian) I could get a nice set of tools, a good amount of wood from the mill and could be making sheds / outhouses / gazebos to sell (and rent some nice land and maybe pay some groceries!)

Bill, is that Richmond, OR? Northeast of Bend? Not sure where in the US we'll be heading in spring yet, but there's a good chance we'll see some time on the west coast.

Judith! You rock! Those threads were super helpful, especially the first thread from Paula Berry, her goals, values and perspectives are almost exactly aligned with my own. Thanks a bunch

I'm living south of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada with my partner at the moment, but will be crossing the invisible line to the states come spring as her visitor's permit will be expiring in April (she's an Oregonian).

Hello Terry and thank you for the information! Having to worry about incorporating or insurance policies is quite a bit beyond the stage I'm currently at. I was hoping to hear suggestions and advice about timber framing schools or courses, or some self-led projects / books I could complete / read on my own in order to learn how more about joinery.

That said, I will be copy-pasting your reply to a word doc to keep for future reference

Hello fellow permies!

I’m a longtime lurker here, 27 years old, very keen on pursuing a career in building low-impact, sustainable, well-designed structures (homes, barns, workshops) using available local materials, and hand tools whenever possible, while incorporating different building modalities as appropriate (timber frame, cob, strawbale, rammed earth to name a few). I know, quite a mouthful!

Currently, I’m trying to wrap my head around the best way to get where I want to be (owner of a design/build company doing the above-mentioned things) from where I am now (somewhere around square 1… maybe square 2).

I love working with my hands, building small projects out of wood, and dreaming up designs and ideas. I am a fairly quick learner, well-coordinated, and can handle hand and power tools confidently. I have some experience helping out with house renovations, I’ve built simple things like small outhouses, a chicken coop and a couple of windows out of scrap materials. I’ve taken a natural building course at Aprovecho in Cottage Grove, Oregon. That said I have fairly little formal experience in carpentry, and almost zero in joinery. Therein lies the rub.

As of now I figure the most valuable skill to learn is timber-framing. It’s a much better building modality compared to stick framing IMHO, as when designing and sourcing materials for a timber frame structure, there is a lot more consideration and mindfulness required. Implemented alongside some other techniques, such as strawbale infill, earthen plasters, wood shingles/shakes, it can produce beautiful, functional, natural structures that can last generations. I feel it is also mainstream enough that finding work would be a little easier – compared with log builders, or structural strawbale builders for example.

My next potential steps at this point are:
- contact multiple timber framing and natural building companies, asking if they could use someone like myself
- take a couple months of courses at a school such as Heartwood School in Becket, Massachusetts this summer ( I applied to their Apprenticeship program but didn’t make it in )
- make something using joinery (a shavehorse perhaps?)

So, I would humbly ask my fellow permies with experience in this area for your thoughts on where/how to pursue this path, and I thank you all for reading this far!

All the best!

Dustin