WHY BUILD WITH CORDWOOD?
In 1974, Jaki and I bought land in northern New York to pursue our vision of a self-reliant lifestyle. In those days, the “natural building” structure of choice was the log cabin. We had helped with constructing a log home, and we knew from experience that fitting and hefting the large logs was a lot of hard work. We also knew that in our area, 15 miles from the Canadian border, we would not find logs thick enough to provide adequate insulation against the harsh climate. And building another internal insulated frame inside the log walls seemed to defeat the purpose of minimizing the use of materials. About this time, we stumbled upon the April 1974 issue of National Geographic, which contained a picture of a cordwood home in Skowhegan, Washington. Immediately, we knew that we had found a method of building that satisfied our criteria. Building with cordwood masonry would be cheaper and more efficient than building with conventional methods, as we could salvage “unsuitable wood” to use
