Loading ...When I moved to Canada I first met a log house builder who I volunteered to work for for free so I could learn how to build log houses the proper way….. and it proved to be an art. Selecting the proper logs, winter cutting them when the sap is down, peeling them with a drawknife, seasoning them, scribing them to get a perfect fit on the logs below by making v-grooves the length of the logs, marking out the corner notches, and then cutting out those with a chainsaw, hammer, and chisel…..each log in turn until the walls are up….placing and notching in the purlins, then the cap logs etc.
So anyway, after learning the art of log house building by doing it, I bought the quarter section and built my first log home….and that’s the one I built the hydraulic ram for. When I finished building that home and had installed the hydraulic ram and had it purring along I heard of an opportunity to buy another property across the river and 7 miles into the wilderness on a windy forest service trail, with a mile of river frontage, surrounded by Crown land, and the upshot was that that is exactly what I ended up doing…but that’s an entirely different story . On that property was the beginnings of my Suskwa Simmental Ranch which ended up 20 years later with 1750 deeded acres, 1000 acre adjoining woodlot, and 30,000 acres of private range for the cattle. All basically for the price of a lotta hard work.
All that was to say the log house builder wanted to buy my first log home because he said he could not have done a better job or got a better fit. Everything was “perfect”….but that was not meant to be. The Anesthesiologist from the local hospital heard about it and came and made me a cash offer better than what I was asking, so that’s the way I sold it. He and I became friends and I often stopped at his home for coffee and a visit on my rare trips to town…. and always there was the “clack, clack, clack” of that hydraulic ram tapping away in the distance.