MEMOIRS PART 4 - THE SAWMILL

Sometime in the 1920s Dad decided to build a new sheep shed. He apparently thought that the Lombardy Poplars, which grew in abundance of the borders of his farm, would be a good source of lumber. He built a sawmill near what we called the Old Barn. This was a large wooden structure about 1/4 mile north of our house on Cooley's Lane; it burned down in a spectacular fire in about 1930.

The sawmill consisted of a huge circular saw blade driven by a big gasoline engine. It was surrounded by the structure necessary to guide the logs through the blade. There was a pit 5 or 6 feet deep below the sawblade. Once this was built, Dad had about 10 of the poplar trees on the west side of the farm cut down. They were trimmed, cut to suitable lengths, and hauled to the sawmill. These logs were about 4 feet in diameter.

In passing I will mention that the Lombardy polar is a tree that will grow back by sending up shoots. These did, and the last time I looked at them in 1950, they were almost as tall as the original trees.

Most of the logs were cut into planks about one inch thick and then ripped into boards about a foot wide. The rest of the logs were cut into two inch thick planks and then ripped into various widths: 2X2, 2X4, 2X6, etc. I don't recall the specific widths.

The rough-cut wood was then hauled to the site of the new shed sheep where the construction was taking place. The finished building was about 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, with window openings about every 10 feet ( no glass, but with doors to close them), and there was a door every 25 feet along one of the long sides. Inside were many small pens where ewes and lambs were kept and attended to until the lambs were able to nurse properly. (see sheep). I think Dad bought shingles and all of the main structural timbers from somewhere else, because poplar wood was weak and couldn't be made into shakes.

The finished structure looked very good, and served its purpose well. That is, it was built to be a lambing shed.