Well, the second cabin is just about complete. The chimney is up, it’s all chinked, the stairs are even built inside. It won’t have any plumbing or electricity – it will be just like it would have been 150 years ago. A historical artifact, and nothing more.
Log Cabin
Highland Timberframe, who rebuilt this cabin, are very talented fellers who pay very close attention to detail. The pegs to keep together the porch posts were all hand-carved:
Pegs
The stairs presented a problem. Originally they were in the middle of the house, but had been moved to an end-wall by the time of taking the cabin down. We decided to put the stairs where they originally were, but it was so steep, we couldn’t quite figure out how they did it. The original builders may have not done it this way, but Jim and I had both seen this old-timey stair configuration for steep stairs, and thought they just might have. It’s really a very clever and non-intuitive approach to solving the problem of steep stairs, allowing much better “clearance” for each foot-fall. You can see it’s as steep as the modern step-ladder behind it, but in a lot of ways has much better ergonomics.
Cabin Stairs
Trish and I still aren’t quite sure what we’ll exactly do with the cabin. Probably put some rockers on the porch and come up and sit sometimes – it’s a beautiful site. Maybe plant some fruit trees. There are some yucca plants here that surely date back to the original homeplace, but the Moore’s would have also likely planted iris, daylilly, grape hyacinth, forsythia, and quince – all plants very easily transplanted and propogated from neighbors. Those plants are almost always indicative of an old mountain house site. So we’ll probably plant some of those, as we have some old-timey varieties transplanted from old mountain house sites many decades ago now.
How many stories does this old homesite tell? Sometime almost exactly 150 years ago, Noah Moore’s wife was reportedly standing right next to her cabin where this one now sits, holding her infant baby in her arms when she was struck by lightning and was killed. The baby survived. But this cabin sat for a hundred years – no telling the other stories….
Crooked River Farm 
4 comments
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February 21, 2010 at 9:01 am
Jason Rutledge
Are you guys accepting donations of period appropriate furniture for the cabin? We have a few really old hand made and quite uncomfortable primitive chairs that would fit that abode very well. So if you glance up there
one day and see them setting on the porch you will know where they came from.
Jason
February 21, 2010 at 10:56 am
CrookedRiver
Yep! And the more uncomfortable the better – we want it to be authentic don’t ya know! Thanks, Jason.
February 21, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Lanette Ward
I love this picture. And I would love to spend an hour rocking on the front porch some day.
April 25, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Soilwalker
57.5° is the magic number; when you lift your foot that value describes the angle from your ankle needed to clear your knee off a step.
This is brilliant as it allows an alternating tread stair to be navigated w/out hazard- unless you’re trying to change direction mid-flight. Then all bets are off.