Last night for supper we celebrated the season by firing up the Weber Kettle and grilling some beautiful grassfed beef New York strip steaks. These grassfed beef New York strip steaks are really special because they came from Against The Wind Ranch, which specializes in grassfed Black Angus beef that is raised with such care and dedication that it is Certified Humane. Earning the Certified Humane label is not easy as producers must submit to a level of scrutiny in their animal husbandry that makes many folks uncomfortable. We are glad to support Against The Wind Ranch and their efforts with achieving Certified Humane status for their operation.

Many folks think that grassfed beef is difficult to cook - especially folks with a vested interest in feedlot beef. Hogwash! Cooking naturally lean and naturally tender grassfed beef is a cinch so long as you don't try to incinerate it as you might a much fattier cut. My approach for grilling over charcoal or on a cast-iron griddle is to give the steak a quick sear at high heat on both sides (edges too if it is 2-inches thick) and then about 5 minutes at medium heat on one side and 4 minutes on the other. I test for doneness by holding the steak with tongs and gauging its flexibility. A perfectly medium rare is achieved when the steak droops about half as much as it did when it was raw. Experiment a little, I know you will get the hang of it. We also like to lightly rub our steaks with what amounts to a slightly modified version of this Memphis dry rub. I love the taste of plain pure beef, but I really love the mild zing the rub adds.

No grilled grassfed steak supper would be complete without some potatoes. We like ours roasted in Lucini's chile-infused olive oil. Essentially we parboil the spuds for 5 minutes, drain and pat dry. Then we toss them in the chile-flavored olive oil, season with gray sea salt and black pepper and bake at 450 degrees for around 25 minutes. Yum.

While the potatoes were baking, I lit the charcoal with my trusty chimney starter. These devices come in real handy for getting rid of excess newsprint and leave you with a bed of coals that doesn't taste like a chemical plant. And it only takes about 10 minutes to get the coals going.

Have you ever seen meat this beautiful? This is how the Against The Wind Ranch's New York strip steaks look before getting the rub. This is one of life's most wonderful treats -- perfect for that anniversary, birthday or just to celebrate the season.

All photos and potato recipe are courtesy Karen Keb.

As part of the kitchen make over at our 104 year old farmhouse, my Partner In Culinary Crime and I decided to build an antique canning jar light to replace the shabby 1970s vintage fixture that dangled over the sink. We sourced an old Mason jar with a tin screw-on lid at the local antique store and I dug through a box of outdoor electrical junk I had collected over the years and came up with a plan. We did stop at our local big-box home improvement store for a pull switch and small-diameter 40 watt bulb to help it all come together. We opted for a rigid stalk-mount on our antique canning jar light but you could just as easily make it a pendant if you use electrical cord rated to bear sufficient weight.

After rummaging around for a bit, I decided to use parts from a motion-activated outdoor light that came from the old mud room as it was torn off the house. This fixture included a weather-resistant surface-mount box and with two light stalks and one motion sensor screwed into its cover. The parts were black so my PICC spray painted them with heat-resistant paint to more or less match the antique canning jar's weathered tin lid. Since the old light fixture was hard-wired without a wall switch, I knew I would need to install a new pull-switch in the unit or tear out a bunch of wall. Surprise, surprise, I opted to drill the cover for a new pull switch. Basically, I relocated one of the light sockets to the cover's center hole, installed screw-in plugs in the other holes and drilled a 3/8 inch hole to accommodate the new pull switch. The surface-mount box was plenty large to contain the switch and wiring.

Since the canning jar's lid had a glass liner, I smacked it with a hammer to crack it (safety glasses a must) and it came out without damaging the tin lid. Next I took my 1.5-inch diameter hole saw and chucked it into my trusty Milwaukee 1/2-inch chuck Hole Shooter and slowly and carefully cut a 1.5-inch diameter hole in the center of the tin lid. You need to be a little careful here because it is tough to clamp the lid without distorting it  but if the hole saw grips while spinning fast, there's a decent chance for some serious rash on your hand. I have lots of experience cutting holes in sheet metal with hole saws so I managed to make the cut with no damage to my hands or the lid.

I needed to remove the light stalk from the box to slip the canning jar lid down over the inboard socket end. The socket was molded with a flare and small flange, so I carefully pressed the canning jar lid down the taper to rest against the flange. After reinstalling the stalk, I wired it up (power was off to that circuit), buttoned it up, flipped the breaker and voila, light. This project was quick, fun and didn't cost much. If you had to purchase the parts you would be out a minimum of about $20 depending on the antique canning jar market in your area.

You walk into the grocery store mid winter, spy those perfectly smooth and red tasteless tomatoes and instantly engage in a visceral emotional battle to buy a package. You pick up the loveliest of those tasteless tomatoes and place it below your nose, inhaling deeply – is that the scent of tomato or is that the memory of last summer’s fruit you detect? No matter, you so crave the tomato’s potential for culinary complexities that in your mind you’ve already sliced that tasteless tomato and applied it to a sandwich or chunked it atop an out-of-season salad. And then you bite into it – Blech! 

In investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook’s upcoming and quite possibly greatest work, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit you will discover just how and why commodity tomatoes came to be nothing more than hard, fibrous, potentially poisonous and completely unappealing stand-ins for the real deal. You also will discover that the human and environmental costs associated with the $10 billion fresh tomato industry simply cannot justify consuming the so-called fruit, not to mention that when you do, you get a good dose of at least 35 pesticides, some of which are among the most dangerous. And besides, who wants to support any industry that uses modern-day indentured labor, preferring to employ non-English-speaking illegal aliens because they’re easier to enslave?

Estabrook’s narrative begins with an animated analysis of uniformly hard, and perfectly shaped, green orbs flying off trucks at 60 mph (all safely hitting the pavement and rolling to a stop none the worse for wear) and reveals the inner (and often very dark) workings of Florida’s winter tomato farming industry. Along the way you will meet true villains who would keep workers in the field, picking while spray rigs douse them with a cocktail so toxic their babies are born without limbs – and worse. You will meet modern-day slavers, growers in denial, mothers beaten for taking time off for pre-natal care, lawyers and public officials doing their best to elicit change, scientists and breeders just doing what they do. Tomatoland illuminates the seedy labor contractor lurking in the shadows and calls the uber-powerful Florida Tomato Committee on everything from keeping good-tasting tomatoes off grocery store shelves to threatening growers with six-figure fines for paying pickers a fair wage. 

Barry Estabrook is a masterful story teller with an uncanny ability to render intricate intellectual pathways entirely accessible. Tomatoland deftly leads us through a complex maze of interrelated occurrences, legal decisions and cultural practices (human and tomato) in a narrative that reads a little like a thriller. I finished the book in two sittings and found myself identifying with farmers, migrant workers, lawyers and even some large growers.

Perhaps the most important lesson from Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland is that no matter how hard the PR voices and online advocates try to make industrial agriculture all about “feeding a hungry world,” the fact of the matter is that corporate wealth is No. 1. When large corporate (so-called family) farms are willing and able to exploit, poison and otherwise despoil people and environment alike, all while delivering a product that appeals only to their large corporate customers, not the end consumer, the motive is all about money.

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit is a must read for everyone who eats. I don’t care if you are in the commodity cattle business or feed your own family with a small garden. I don’t care if you are a policy maker, extension professional, molecular biologist, industrial mogul, minister, teacher, or what have you. Tomatoland illustrates how fundamentally bankrupt our current commodity-based, industrial food systems have become and offers a glimmer of hope for a food future that’s healthful for all involved. Read it and try not to weep.

Estabrook’s Tomatoland will be available June 7. Pre-order your copy today.  

Ever since my boat building days I've wanted to mill my own lumber from trees on hand but I could never quite justify the expense, until recently that is. A couple of weeks ago I purchased a Granberg Small Alaskan Chainsaw Mill with slabbing bars, a new 20-inch bar and ripping chains from Bailey's Outdoor Power Equipment  (for my trusty Husqvarna 357XP saw). I finally got to put the tool to use last Sunday after felling a 20-inch-diameter pine that died two summers ago. Since I promised to build my Partner In Culinary Crime a new kitchen island as part of our kitchen makeover, I wanted to make it special by using as many of the natural resources this farm has to offer as possible. So the island's framing and panels will utilize the pine and the top will give me a reason to mill some lovely American Black Walnut logs that I scavenged from trees we dozed off the pond dams.

Once everything was assembled, the first part of my chainsaw milling adventure involved felling the big old pine tree. Luckily it was growing on the edge of the pine grove so I set it down in the open and avoided damaging an adjacent oak tree -- a wedge, driven into the back cut helped put the tree right where it needed to go. There were so many branches on the tree that the trunk was held off the ground. Since I needed material that was 6 feet long or shorter, I cut a 7-foot log off the butt end and rolled it into the open.

Making the first cut with the Alaskan chainsaw mill is pretty straightforward once, you place and level the slabbing bars. This handy device makes it easy to get a nice flat and true first cut and makes it easy to cut down a log that's a bit wider than the chainsaw's bar.

Making the first cut was a breeze with the slabbing bars installed. I cut this slab thicker than normal because I want to use it to make a shaving horse. Note that after sawing a couple of feet, I installed a wedge into the end of the cut to keep the slab's weight from pinching the saw and causing it to bind.

The saw's blade was just a tad short on the butt end of the log, so I removed that first slab hinge-like and trimmed down the slight ridge left on the cut surface's edge. The next step was to roll and brace the log 90 degrees to prepare for removing the second slab and in the process, I also managed to strip most of the bark.

After repositioning the slabbing bars 90 degrees to the first cut, I cut a much thinner slab and proceeded to slice the log into several 4-inch-thick and 2-inch-thick pieces that I will resaw and plane into 3.75-inch square cross section legs and 1.75-inch thick framing boards. I will cut the paneling from another section of the pine tree.

The money cuts created these timber-sized planks and many more thinner boards. the Alaskan mill worked flawlessly and the Husqvarna 357XP powerhead was able to drive the ripping chain no problem. It took about 4 - 6 minutes to make the widest cuts at 7-feet long. You certainly won't go into the lumber milling business with this setup, but you surely will be willing and able to saw logs that you wouldn't even think of dragging off to the mill. That and the fact that you can easily bring the Alaskan chainsaw mill to the logs instead of having to grub them out of the bush makes the tool indispensable for me. As the kitchen project progresses, I will have many more opportunities to put my latest purchase through its paces. Stay Tuned.

Photos courtesy Karen Keb.

My Partner In Culinary Crime suprised me last night with the most amazing fish and chips for supper -- a real St. Patrick's Day delight. Supper was actually deep fried fish and boiled new potatoes with a delicious tartar sauce she whipped up too. Wow! When I asked her whether she felt like going out for some St. Patrick's Day corned beef and cabbage, she turned and told me this story: "I wanted to make something festive for St. Patty's day without having to run to town for groceries, so I looked around at what we had (that 10 lbs. of cod in the freezer from my recent fish splurge helped), and came up with fish and 'chips' - I substituted boiled new potatoes for fries since we didn't have russets. I was inspired by this girl's blog (Budget Cooking For Two), which included a fried fish recipe that came from the Barefoot Contessa." She said that she tweaked the fish recipe a tiny bit -- I said: "Wow, is that delicious!"

It took a little arm twisting to get my PICC to agree to let me post these recipes since she didn't invent everything from scratch, but here you go. And she doesn't know that my not-at-all styled food shot is going in here too -- there will be reprimands, but what can you do with a phone camera, poor light and an aching hunger in your belly? Oh, and in the spirit of using what we had on hand, I rummaged around deep in the fridge and found a can of stout. I poured it into two jars -- one for her and one for me.

Fried Cod 

1 lb cod, fillets or chunks, cut into 3" pieces
1/2 c plus 1 T. all-purpose flour
1/2 T. baking powder
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. freshly grated lemon zest
1/2 cup water
1 large egg
frying oil 

1. Rinse and dry the fish, then sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides.  

2. Mix the flour, baking powder, cayenne, salt, pepper, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Whisk in the water, then the egg.  

3. Pour 1/2" of frying oil (I used a combination of safflower and peanut) into a large cast iron pot. Heat the oil to 360 degrees, monitoring with a cooking thermometer. You'll need to keep the stove at medium-high heat to maintain the temperature at 360.  

4. Working in batches, dredge the fish in the batter, then carefully place in hot oil. Cook 3 minutes on each side. Place on a paper-towel-lined plate to cool.

 
Tartar Sauce 

I didn't have relish or pickles in the fridge, so I just put together some similar ingredients and came up with a nice homemade tartar sauce.

3/4 cup Hellmann's mayonnaise 

2 T. minced onion 

1 T. white wine vinegar 

1/2 tsp. dried dill  

dash of salt and pepper 

Mix all ingredients together. 

By now you've figured out that I love books, especially books that empower you with all the information needed to build just about anything. My favorites among those works offer a glimpse of hope for folks without all of the modern tools or the shiny new methods mastered. I recently picked up three such how to build anything titles that were originally published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and recently brought back to life by Skyhorse Publishing. The prose in the books is positively delightful and offers a glimpse into period phraseolgy as well as lovely illustrations of entirely buildable projects that you might actually still attempt with hand tools -- although no demerits are given for judiciously employing power tools or modern versions of vintage tools and machines.

The first couple of titles are devoted to building specific things that are useful around the homestead, at your hunting camp, for your back 40 escape or just for fun. Shelters, Shacks and Shanties and How to Make Them by Boy Scouts of America founder D.C. Beard and Fences, Gates and Bridges and How to Make Them by George A. Martin offer excellent ideas with sufficient instruction to build bark teepees, log cabins, log and clay chimneys, dog-proof fences, stock-proof hedges, rustic gates, wooden bridges, stone culverts and so much more. While you might want to substitute readily available modern materials for some of the recommended supplies, these books should inspire you to make use of the bounty that your land offers to create really useful and potentially fun items to make your homestead a happy place, while saving plenty of money in the process. Although I fancied myself an experienced fence builder before reading these books, I learned of several styles of fencing that were formerly unknown to me. I also learned why those pioneer cabins with log chimneys didn't catch on fire and how to build sufficient woodland shelters that I'm tempted to leave the tent behind the next time I go camping -- don't worry, I won't deface any public or private property in the process. 

The third title, The Handyman's Guide: Essential Woodworking Skills and Techniques by Paul N. Hasluck takes a turn of the last century approach to educating the average Joe and Jane on professional approaches to virtually all aspects of woodworking. This book is beautifully illustrated with drawings, plans, photos, you name it, and it begins with an excellent tool history and listing of the tools of the day with instruction on how to use them. Once you know a brace from a bit, you can move on to learn the nuances of joinery and discover which joints to use in virtually every situation. And then you are presented with several hundred pages of woodworking lessons disguised as projects -- birdhouses, balustrades, sideboards, workbenches, tool boxes, small buildings -- they're all in this book. This tome of woodworking titles also includes valuable reference materials on everything from wood species identification to nail and screw types to sawing logs to -- you get the idea. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a rank amateur, The Handyman's Guide will encourage you to try something new or a different technique, and inspire you with hundreds of projects.

I place all three of these new-old titles in the "must have" category for all do-it-yourselfers out there, and they most definitely deserve a prominent place in on your homestead bookshelf. Look for them at a bookseller near you or online.

I haven't reported on our kitchen renovation project for a couple of weeks, but the cabinet facelift project has been making steady progress. We sourced the single-bowl cast-iron sink and faucet and met with a countertop fabricator. Last Friday, I took the day off to travel with my Partner In Culinary Crime to the bustling Kansas City suburb of Lenexa to visit a slab broker. What's a slab broker you might wonder? The slab broker is a business that sources all kinds of stone slabs from all over the world, it turns out. I won't tell you which stone we picked out for the countertops just yet, but I will let you know what we've been up to.

So, we left off last time having more or less figured out how to redo these old build-in-place hardwood plywood cabinets. In a nutshell, we are painting them inside and out and giving the doors a little character by making them look like they were made of tongue-and-groove boards. You can see here that we made some decent progress on the upper cabinets ... the house has settled sufficiently that we weren't able to take every bow and bend out of the cabinets and the doors still don't line up perfectly in some places. That's OK with us because this 104 year old house probably has even more settling to do down the road.

Whew, this place has a lot of cabinets ... about $40,000 worth if we tried to replace them with good custom cabinets. Here you can see the white tile backsplash that was installed above the laminate backsplash, which was glued to the countertop. I pried off the laminate backsplash so that the countertop fabricator can make an accurate template -- there aren't too many perfectly square angles in this house. We removed the old light above the sink and built a new one using readily available fixtures and an antique Ball jar. I will blog about that little project later.

The range was pretty well crammed in there before and since the pantry cabinet to the right was right up against the burners, we always brooded about setting it on fire. The cabinet got scorched mildly once when I was making a white sauce for macaroni and cheese. So I decided to remove part of it, shore up the remaining upper cabinet and prepare the lower section for countertop. Suffice it to say that some careful work with the sawsall, level, measuring tape, chisel, pry bar and hammer got the project to this point. Don't you love that old cherry-print wallpaper? I had to take the hood down to make the cabinet adjustment and it made prepping and priming the upper cabinets a lot easier too. Once we get the finish coats on these upper cabinets, we'll move on to the bottoms. They will get treated roughly the same way but with a different topcoat color. Stay tuned.  

Although I've yet to try even a significant fraction of the recipes in Deborah Krasner's lavishly illustrated and beautifully written book Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat, I'm well on my way. Wow, this book is so much more than a cookbook. Good Meat is a thoughtfully written guidebook that delves into the modern state of meat, why grassfed and locally sourced meat is a better bargain environmentally, nutritionally and culinarily, and then leads the reader through all kinds of adventures with one of nature’s most valuable sources of protein and high-quality calories. Krasner’s keen understanding of just what goes on in our nation’s factory farms and processing facilities and her way with words make understanding why we want to grow our own or source it from an artisan agriculturist a no-brainer. And in the process she takes all the mystery out of cooking with grassfed meats and free-range poultry – nope, you won’t find any tough-as-leather, dried out disasters on these pages. 

As a celebration of the best, cleanest and most humane meats available (in your own backyard), Good Meat offers an accurate animal anatomy lesson (species by species) with such complexities as primal cuts, retail cuts and even how to break down a carcass nicely explained. If you find yourself with a lamb shoulder sub-primal on your hands, you will discover that you can create a bone-in or boneless shoulder roast or shoulder blade chops and arm chops from the cut. Even if you will never butcher and break down your own lamb, Krasner gives you the language and the understanding to have a meaningful conversation with your butcher. Once you have an understanding of the anatomy and what it means for the table, Good Meat offers some general cooking considerations for each of the parts and then bursts into an explosion of delectable delights in the recipes that follow. Not sure what to do with that lamb shoulder? Why not try it braised in cider with yogurt and quinces? 

Good Meat is most definitely not another grilling or barbeque book, although it does contain many such meaty recipes. Instead, Krasner offers us a choice among simple to sophisticated ways to enjoy that ultimate gift of nourishment. How about a split pea soup with bacon batons or a sweet and salty bacon cornbread? Perhaps rabbit with prunes marinated in red wine catches your eye – and your palate. Wondering what to do with all those pheasants that wind up in the freezer come fall? How does pheasant in lemon cream sauce with nutmeg sound – yes, just writing that makes me long for those dry fall days and it isn’t even spring yet.

Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat belongs on the shelf of every carnivore out there. If you eat meat and if you raise animals for meat or if you have ever considered eating meat or eggs, you need a copy of Deborah Kranser’s work of art. The thoughtful essays, equipment and seasonings chapters alone are worth the price of admission, but the anatomy lessons, cutting instructions and more than 200 recipes make the book a rare bargain indeed.

Look for Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat at your favorite online or brick and mortar bookstore.

I just finished reading True Cow Tales: Literary Sketches and Stories by Farmers, Ranchers, and Dairy Princesses edited by C. R. Lindemer. True Cow Tales is delightful anthology of bovine buzz that covers the ground with more than 45 stories and poems that let you in on what life with cattle is really like – and what the life of dairy princesses past and present is all about. Lindemer’s touch really brings the anthology to life with an organizational scheme that makes sense and connects several generations of agriculturists.

Read about the champion Simmental cow named Ruby whose reward was a handful of Oreos and a heart-warming tale of excess milk, cookies and the meaning of neighborly. True Cow Tales will make you laugh, cry, think and just might make you feel good about being human. Inside these pages you will see what real bull is all about, you’ll learn about bovine love and butter-carton skirts, and you’ll experience the pain of losing the place you love. In True Cow Tales, cows have names like Patty, Dixie and Dawn – and some of them love to find holes in the fence and mix it up with their keepers.

True Cow Tales isn’t just for farmers or folks interested in keeping cows. This anthology paints a behind the scenes picture of what animal agriculture is really like and records some important history in the process. In addition to those with an agricultural focus, the book is a must read for folks interested in authentic story telling, where food comes from and in reconnecting with the agricultural roots that made this country strong.

True Cow Tales is available directly from the publisher and at various online and brick and mortar book sellers. I recommend that you get your copy today.

A couple of weeks ago, friend and Mother Earth News assistant editor Heidi Hunt made me aware of a new book: Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land by Kurt Timmermeister. Heidi's enthusiastic description of Growing a Farmer motivated me to request a review copy – I read the book in the course of three sessions and it almost made me late to work twice.

In Growing a Farmer, successful twenty-something Seattle restaurateur Kurt Timmermeister chronicles his heartwarming and palpable transition from city apartment dweller to first-time home buyer to passionate food farmer on Vashon Island, just a 15 minute ferry ride from the big city. Timmermeister is about as naive as it gets when he decides he wants his first piece of real estate to be a farm, but he doesn’t let that stand in his way. In the end, it is that very naiveté that makes it possible for him to sell his café and figure out how to make 12 acres of fairly worn out and overgrown land produce sufficient food to keep the farm afloat, without a steady infusion of cash from any “real job” in town.

Timmermeister has a compelling way of leading us through his discoveries, his failures and successes, and he gives us a rare glimpse of what real food is all about and what it means to take full responsibility for the animals whose lives sustain us.  Growing a Farmer’s message that “you can do it” comes through loud and clear and serves as powerful inspiration for anyone interested in moving to the country to grow good food or in getting the most out of the place they already call home. The book is an important read for dreamers, doers and even conventional truck, grain and livestock farmers. Timmermeister's voice is engaging and encompassing – you won’t find any preaching on these pages.

Growing a Farmer is most definitely not a how-to manual in the nitty gritty sense of the word, nor is it a cookbook or philosophical examination of the state of agriculture in our country. Rather it is a book that contains wisdom and example and that celebrates the fundamental goodness associated with providing the best possible nourishment through the fruits of your labor.  

Timmermeister’s Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land is available through your favorite bookstores – get yourself a copy and settle in for an inspirational adventure.

 The way our farm is configured, we really needed one more livestock shed for lambing and to keep the guard donkeys out of the rain so I decided to build a loafing shed using found materials. The starting point for the loafing shed was an old native limestone hog shed foundation and knee walls. That hog shed was long gone, but the walls were still sound and the 100-year-old anchor bolts were also still intact. I didn’t want to put a roof over the entire 32 feet of shed, so I decided to just cover half of it.

The first step in building the loafing shed was to source the timbers. Since we had just renovated a couple of pond dams, which involved removing many mature trees from the dams, I had plenty of fairly straight hackberry trunks to use for rafters and purlins. The farm also has plenty of Osage orange growing in the hedgerows to use for posts … Osage orange lasts more than 30 years in the ground here so I cut two 13-foot long Osage orange posts about a foot in diameter.

Sinking those big posts to the first limestone layer about 5-feet down would have been a heck of an undertaking if I didn’t happen to have the DR Power towable backhoe on hand. That little machine made short the work of planting those posts, which are roughly 12 feet apart. And thanks to my trusty Kubota loader tractor’s hydraulics, lifting the posts into the holes and holding them more or less vertically was a breeze as well.

The loader came in handy with setting the two 18-foot long hackberry rafters, which were held fast in the notched posts with 3/4 –inch carriage bolts and to the back wall with the old ½-inch anchor bolts. I didn’t take the time to strip the bark from the hackberry rafters or purlins – they would last longer stripped, but so far the bark is just peeling off and there is no rot in the wood itself.

Once the rafters were set, I installed five 16-foot long hackberry poles perpendicular to the rafters to serve as purlins … I did a little notching to help keep the pitch fairly smooth (to aid with roofing) and a little trimming of knobs and high-spots on those purlins for the same reason. The chainsaw and sawsall came in handy for that work.

After much consideration and deliberation, I was convinced to forego the recycled corrugated steel roofing I had on hand from a demolition project and instead use new – the roof is visible from the road, after all. So down to the small town lumberyard we trekked to source several 16-foot lengths of freshly galvanized corrugated steel … we spent about $120 for sufficient material to cover the roof with some left over for other projects.

Once installed, you can see all the wobbles and sways with my raw-timber roof framing. I could have leveled things better and used some dimensional lumber to even things up a bit, but I think it looks whimsical and I didn’t want to spend the money on dimensional lumber. I’m happy to report that the roof has withstood a 70 mph gust, 25 mph continuous winds and roughly 13 inches of snow load in each of its first two winters. We plan to enclose the front of the shed with panels and gates at some point, but in the meantime, we have a serviceable loafing/lambing shed that the donkeys seek when the rain is cold and some of the sheep pile under when blizzards blow out of the north.

I have more plans for the slowly dwindling tree snags that resulted from our dam repairs – and most of those plans don’t involve campfires. Stay tuned.