Cutting the Timbers
The timbers we used for building a drying stage were all of cottonwood. Being thus of a soft wood, the timbers did not last so very long when exposed to the weather; and a stage built of cottonwood timbers lasted only about three years; the fourth year, unless the stage was rebuilt, the posts rotted and the stage would fall down. Unlike the posts of a watchers’ stage, those of a drying stage were always carefully peeled of bark, as they rotted more quickly if the bark was left on.
My mother’s drying stage, as I have said, had eight posts; and these posts we cut with forks at the top. If we could find them, or if we had time to hunt for them in the woods, we cut double-forked posts, like that of [figure 32]. But it was much easier to get the smaller posts, of the height of the stage floor. Such a post had but one fork at the top, in which lay one of the beams that supported the floor; and a companion post, longer and not so heavy, stood by it to support the railing at the top of the stage. However, in reckoning the number of posts of a stage, I count a single-forked post and its companion as but one post.
For the two long beams on which the floor of the stage was to be laid, we cut two rather slender logs, the longest we could find in the woods.
All these timbers we cut in the summer time, peeling off the bark and letting them lie until winter, to dry. Then when there was snow on the ground, we hitched ropes to the seasoned timbers and dragged them into the village.
The stage was built the following spring or summer, to be ready for the fall harvest; so that we commonly cut the timbers for a stage nine months or a year before they were to be used in building it.
Digging the Post Holes
When we were ready to begin building, the first thing we had to do was to mark the post holes. We laid the two long floor beams parallel on the ground, at such a distance apart as to enclose the space necessary for the stage. We then marked the places for the post holes, at proper distances along the inside of the two beams; there were eight of these post holes, four on a side.
These post holes were dug with a long digging stick, and the dirt removed, to the depth of a woman’s arm from the shoulder to the hand; that was as far as one could reach down to lift out the dirt. To get the post holes all of a depth, I took a stick and measured on it the length of my arm from shoulder to fingers; this stick I used to probe the holes to see that they were of a proper depth.