LIVING OFF GRID

This blog is about our travels in our solar powered "Airstream" and living off grid, in our passive solar home, near Bancroft, Ontario, Canada.

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Monday 8 August 2011

Looking Back

Bancroft is celebrating their 150th anniversary. This weekend they had a fabulous display of life back when Bancroft was just a mud hole on the York River.

Back then logs were hewn by hand and pulled out of the bush by horses. To square the timber, which was then made into rafts and floated down to Montreal,  he used a broad axe and cut down to a line drawn on the log.  Once loaded on a ship it was taken to England to be used to build their sailing ships. There was a lot of waste left on the forest floor from lumbering back then. Today even the sawdust is used.

Many people dressed in period costumes.

Remember there were no chain saws 150 years ago. If you wanted a tree cut down you used a two man saw and kept it sharp. These two boys cut through this timber in less than a minute.

Hope you take a drive and come on up.

1 comment:

  1. You should hire the kids to come over and cut some trees down, tell them it's "training"
    Ha ha ha

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