S6 E13 Luke Larson - Listening and learning from the stories in our walls

Futuresteading

Nestled in a multi hundred year old barn in Vermont, USA, is Luke Larson, his wife & children. Creating art with 600 year old timber is no mean feat, especially when it’s the wood which leads the way with a language that takes a lifetime to learn. As an analogy to the way we could all interact with the natural world, Luke's love affair with this way of life is absolute and pretty darned compelling when you hear him explain how he discovered it, why he continues it and what his community looks like within it.

Show Notes
Walking a mile through the woods to his grandfather's woodshop
Gratitude for his team who are as committed to ancient skills and community as he is.
Marvelling at the walls of the barns which housed people, animals and creatures of all kinds
Discovering 1870’s account ledgers - a window into a past way of existence
One of 8 children with thoughtful, open, practical parents who sowed the seeds
The onsite processing facility his parents built on their family owned, community scale dairy farm
Hand tools offer an opportunity to learn the nature of individual trees and working WITH nature
Right from the get go timber framing is about understanding how the timber will evolve over the coming 200 hundred years
Woodworking teaches him to understand his place in the ecosystem - listening
Accepting you are forever a student of the wood not the other way around
Riving - the Scandinavian process of reading the timber to build boats by listening to the song that its singing
What made him say yes to being on a television series
Keeping Vermont's built culture alive and shared
The plus’s and minus’s of having a modern day datasystem available to us. Ensuring this doesn’t replace face to face and generation to generation interactions
His intentional approach to how he lives his life as students who are intentionally pursuing a lifestyle that he is in love with.
His community encyclopedia of knowledge which becomes more available as trust is built and relationships are forged
Raising his own barn with his community around him
Translating the lessons he learns from trees to other spheres of the natural world.
Rituals of barn raising
Timber frames cannot be made alone - they require a team and this is part of its magic
Ritualising the teams safety - taking the mundane and bringing reverence to it.
Using the dark, quiet moments to maintain his hand tools and honour them
Marvelling at the aesthetic touches of days gone by - why did they value these small touches when life was easily as busy as our modern day.
Gratitude for his grandfather who allowed him to lean on his workbench
Staying intentionally small
Balancing business with the need to give back to community
Why teaching 60 school kids in using hand tools and listening to the nature of wood has been the highlight of his career
How centring it can be to hold and listen to wood. Learn from the tree.

Reference:

Green Mountain timberframes - blog

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