Many Hands
This past Saturday, I had the good fortune to be present at a real, live barnraising at Angelic Organics and the CSA Learning Center. About a dozen people had worked all week making a barn (literally) by hand — hand drilling, hand chiselling, hand cutting — from 134 large timbers, fashioning tenons and mortises (tabs and slots), and then assembling four massive walls. On Saturday, another 50 or so of us showed up to lift those walls into place and add the various connecting pieces and floors.
The most remarkable part of the whole experience was being part of 50-60 people, all holding what we could of the massive weight of each of those big-timber walls. We could struggle or we could slack off a bit and rest, but somehow the walls just floated on our 100+ hands… and then slowly tipped skyward into place. We had a beautiful sunny day, some fantastic food, and a bunch of folks who came out just to watch. It was a gorgeous, glorious day. Beyond words, really.
They say that you can count on one hand the number of barns built each year in this high-craft, high-community way. I’d like to think that OpenSpaceTech is inviting a similar spirit and ease into other kinds of work. The connection between BarnRaising and OpenSpaceTech was strengthened for me when I was leaving: “Some great people here today, Tom. Sure would like to see what happens if they all got into a big circle,” I said to Learning Center Director Tom Spaulding. “Let’s do an Open Space!” he called back from the second floor, as he pounded the last floor boards into place and the moon came up full over the fields.