Monteverde Meeting Hall

So, the whole purpose of coming to Costa Rica for a couple months, besides the obvious (Get out of the Northeast in the winter!!!!) is to help out on a timberframe project for a community here in Monteverde. The community comes together around Quakerism, as it was founded, and continues to be grounded by, Alabama quakers who moved here in the 1950's in protest of the Korean war.

They were dairy farmers, and they left their homes together to travel to Costa Rica (which had recently abolished it's army) not knowing where, or if, they would find land they could pasture their cows on. They travelled by car and sometimes built the roads as they travelled. They lived in the capital for a year, sending out scouts to check on land up in the mountains that was for sale. They finally settled on Monteverde, for it's good pasture land and affordable price. They had to buy out both the land "owners", and the squatters who had legal rights to the land they'd been working for several years, as per Costa Rican law circa 1950.

They constructed homes, a school, and a building to house Quaker 'meetings', where people gather to sit together mostly in silence, until someone feels moved to speak. They had children, married with Costa Rican folks, had more children, made great cheese, and thus the story goes. 60 years later, the community has grown too large for the original meetinghouse, and is ready to build.....

Mexican Cyprus, invasive to Monteverde.

Before I came down here, I was pretty sure there was no way a 30' x 60' timberframe, made out of dern tough wood, would get cut with volunteer labor from the community, using hand tools, in 2 months. 6th graders and old folks, HANDSAWING the joints. But now I'm a believer, and am psyched to see this project through. 

 

Cedro- that's a smooth surface, with wild figure

A volunteer drills a hole

Cool Bug. Big Plane.