Years ago it was common for farmers erecting a barn or other large outbuilding to have a "barn raising party." In some cases, the "party" involved building the entire barn, but most of the time the party just lasted a day during which most of the community shows up to share in the work and the accompanying feast and festivities. The industry-related goal (as opposed to the social and community-building goals) was to get all of the heavy beams raised and connected together, typically using country joinery, mortise and tenon, lap and peg. Then the farmer would do the rest of the work, siding, roofing, etc., in between farm chores or in the off season. By the morning of the party, the host usually had everything laid out in preparation: beams cut to length, mortises and tenons cut and fitted, and the foundations ready to receive the barns supporting members. The guests then did the heavy lifting, positioning, and assembly.

In some places, barn raising parties are still held, and, in the seventies, the back-to-the-land, the-earth-is-our-mother communal-minded hippies brought the custom back and raised it to an art form. I'd helped several friends do the basic framing for their houses and shops and helped to "get the roof on" the "spec" houses of some of my contractor friends (once the roof is on, the bank will release the next installment of the loan that was necessary to finance the purchase of building materials and, in many cases, put food on the table and gas in the truck). So a lot of people "owed me one" in some sense; still, I probably wouldn't have initiated a barn raising party on my own. I can't recall the details, but my guess is that a couple of our friends had something to do with marshalling the community. In any case, we had a barn raising party to get the main load carrying members raised for the house on Squirrel Mountain.

I put together a little diagram to help understand the hack we used to get the beams in place. The method of raising the beams was part of the design from the beginning; when you build a house with little help and less money, you have to think carefully about construction methods. The house on Squirrel Mountain used a combination of construction methods: post and beam for the main structural members of the octagon to get the house up fast and add strength, and more modern stud and sheathing (so-called "balloon") construction for the attached shop and many of the walls in the octagon to take advantage of conventional building materials that were typically less expensive in terms of cost per square foot.

The central octagon structure was about 10 foot on a side (and so approximately 25 foot across) and the central, flat portion of the roof was about 34 feet off the concrete surface of the basement floor. The poured concrete back wall of the octagon rose about eight feet above the basement floor and the 6 inch by 6 inch (5 1/2 inches square after dressing and squaring) posts that sat on top of this wall were over 20 feet tall before trimming (final trimming was done when the rest of the roof trusses were put in place). The front wall of the basement was about four feet high and made from cinderblocks filled with concrete and reinforcing rod. The posts that sat on this wall were something over 24 feet before trimming. The goal for the house-raising party was to get four of the posts raised into final position: two posts on the back wall of the octagon and two on the front. These posts had to be rock solid and plumb, because everything else would work off of them.

To accomplish this goal, pairs of posts (a back pair and a front pair) were assembled on the ground into "H"-shaped structures by adding cross beams and braces (by the way, finding a flat place to work on a mountain side was a trick all by itself). In the middle of each cross beam a heavy-duty "eye" bolt was placed. Next two concrete pylons were poured in place, one about twenty feet behind (up the mountain) and one about twenty feet in front (and down the mountain closer to the lake) of the octagon foundation where the posts would rest. The pylons would be used to "tie off" the "H"-shaped structures using the "eye" beams. The only trick was getting these massive assemblies into place and secured, plumb and solid enough to work on.

That's where the hack came in. Primitive engineering methods came to mind: the Egyptian obelisks, the statues on Easter Island, the plinths of Stonehenge. Our hack used the same basic principals with a little 20th century technology thrown in. On the day of the party, about twenty people carried each "H" shaped structure horizontally to a location where the base was against a wedge right next to where the structure would eventually sit and the top of the structure was laid out "up the mountain." 3/8 inch twisted steel cables, turnbuckles, and heavy-duty hemp "control" ropes were attached, with one steel cable running from the "upper" eye of the "H" to the bumper of the Power Wagon (a battered four-wheel drive three-quarter ton pickup truck that was our main means of transportation) which was "down the mountain."

The rest is pretty obvious; the available human power assembled under what would be the top of the posts and lifted the "H" as high over their heads as they could, assisted with the aid of wooden "Y" jigs to get as much elevation as they could manage. Once the angle that the posts made with the cable running from the "eye" bolt on the cross beam to the Power Wagon was greater than a calculated amount, the Power Wagon pulled forward raising the "H" into place. Another cable was already attached from the "eye" bolt to the pylon "up the mountain", sized so that, when taut, the posts should be nearly plumb, and rigged with a turnbuckle assembly for final precision positioning using a level and plumb bob.

Everything went according to plan and by late afternoon the posts were in place, plumb, and anchored securely with additional cables. There was a lot of food, wine, marijuana and other recreational drugs of the time, swimming in the pond, and plenty of work to keep the workaholics occupied. It was stressful for Jo and I - it would have been terrible for someone to have hurt themselves working and demoralizing if the hack hadn't worked, but in the end it was challenging enough and there was enough work to go around to get everyone sufficiently tired and feel a satisfying sense of achievement seeing the "H" structures standing on the mountain side.

I wish I had some shots of the party but we were too busy. There were motor cycles, pickups with campers, and Volkswagon buses all over the place, some nude bathing in the lake (embarrassing at one point when a young neighbor, who lived in the valley climbed up the hill to see what was going on), and a lot of food laid out on makeshift plywood tables. There was a follow-up hack to the barn raising when we had a second "real" party for everyone who had helped on the house. This party didn't involve any work and it seems remarkable to me now that people would drive a hundred miles just for a party, but people came from Bumpass, Blacksburg, Charlottesville and beyond. The hack involved recycling the stuff used for the barn raising hack that didn't end up as part of the house: specifically, the steel cable, turnbuckles and assorted rigging.

There would be food, swimming, volley ball and the like at this party but we also wanted something special and so we seized on the idea of building a thrill ride. We found a couple of good sized trees a little ways up the mountain; the trees were separated by about one hundred feet and one above the other on the mountain side. There was a drop of about 40 feet from the base of the upper to the base of the lower tree. We attached the 3/8 inch cable around the upper tree about 10 or 15 feet off the ground and the strung it to the lower tree and anchored it at about the same height off of the ground.

We then fashioned a trolley consisting of a pair of hand grips and a pulley. The idea is that you would climb on board the thrill ride using a ladder leaning against the upper tree and then ride down the mountain swinging from the trolley with the ride "ending" (abruptly it might seem) at the lower tree. The problem of course is that you would build up too much speed and crash into the lower tree. To avoid building up too much speed we attached a hand brake onto the trolley using old motorcycle parts; now the rider could control the rate of his or her descent. As an added precaution we chose a tree (I'm not sure if was it design or chance) for the end of the ride that was surrounded by brambles to cushion a fall - lots of cuts and scratches but at least no broken bones. The ride was a hit. Some folks didn't brake hard enough and hit the down-side tree a little hard. A few others were a little over cautious the first time and braked so hard that they landed in the brambles - but they escaped with minor scratches. Toward the end of the day the brake shoes started to wear thin and we had to close down the "amusement park" but it was fun while it lasted.