It Takes Both Kinds

Round Pole Framing and the Monetary Economy

Sitting amongst hardwoods in Oxford, MI is a series of cabins, shelters, and other structures. They possess a rare quality — striking, yet blending in. The organic lines and earthen materials blur the division between habitable space and wooded wilds. Thatched roofs, cob plaster, straw infilling, and curving timber define the shire-like dwellings. There’s also a “normal” building or two.

All of the structures and demonstrations at Strawbale Studios are utilized to bring folks into the fold by sensory immersion. If you’re there for thatched and living roofs, you’re going to pick at bundles of dried phragmites and notice the intentional layering of materials. If you’re there for earthen walls, you’ll work your fingers and feet into a mixture of mud, lime and straw until you have cob. And if your interest is heating, your bum is gonna be warmed by the heat slowly dispersing through the rocket mass bench, while your belly sings praises of whatever the cob oven baked that morning. Everywhere you turn, there’s something to take in and take note of.

I was there for a hands-on workshop on round pole framing. Round pole is one of the components of natural building that Strawbale Studios focuses on. It’s a construction method akin to timber framing — wood is used without being milled down to dimensional lumber. The distinction from timber framing is that round pole uses smaller-diameter wood. Joining that round wood involves notching, pegs, braces, shims, irregular angles, and varying sizes of shapes, knots and branches, which means that it can be tedious. That’s the time-intensive cost of working with undulating lines and organic peculiarities, beautiful as they are. On the other hand, wood left in the round is stronger than its squared counterpart, and round pole work is relatively cheap and accessible if you have access to a woodlot and some simple hand tools. If you’re managing that woodlot with care, the strength of smaller trees left in the round means that you can make use of thinning cuts and worst-first, single tree selection for framing, rather than seeking out the biggest, straightest, knot-free trees for milling.

Round pole was new to me, and the more I learned, the more hungered for it. I had encountered that sensation at Strawbale Studios before. Eight years earlier, the Oxford forest’s humble dwellings and rightly scaled woodland livelihood had awakened a sense of possibility within me. The hand-hewn DIY ethic showcased at Strawbale Studios; the cultivation of time and skill required to build a life with one’s hands — the spot illumined a different way than the college, career, contentment pipeline I had been struggling to embrace. I do also remember that sense of possibility crumbling as I heard how much money constructing a naturally built home would cost. It sounded too far out of reach at the time.

After the round pole workshop came to a close, I drove back up north. My brother, visiting from California, sat in the passenger seat. He listened to my words on round pole framing and all that went on that weekend. He took it in, thought for a second, and then shared his reflection.

Round pole is to hand-spun local economies, as lumber is to capitalism.

Building with round pole framing is like bartering to meet your needs. And building with conventional, dimensional lumber, like 2 x 4s, is like buying products in a currency-based monetary economy.

Let me explain. Dollar bills allow for convenient interchangeability of goods and services. But there’s often waste involved. This is similar to how milled lumber tends to “fit”. 2 x 4s are relatively interchangeable due to the consistent angles and predictability, but material is removed in the process which makes it square. It loses some of its strength.

This applies to currency. Think of value skimming when credit cards and their transaction fees are involved. Think of inequitable exchanges. The corporation and the buyer aren’t going to run into each other in town. They aren’t going to check in while dropping their kids off at daycare. There tends to be separation involved, and that distance doesn’t foster accountability. The transaction loses some of its strength.

Directly trading goods encourages fairness and relationship with producers, unlike murky systems that lead to predatory lending, unsafe working conditions, dishonest marketing and destructive forms of extraction. But direct trading is slow. And both parties need to have what the other wants or there’s no exchange.

My general stance on fiscal matters has been that of a purist. The least amount of money flowing through you, the better (beyond a reasonable level of economic stability.) This is achieved by aiming to keep your needs and consumption minimal and also aiming to keep your income modest. All money comes from somewhere, and excess anywhere is usually rooted in exploitation or manipulation at some point.

So, as you might imagine, I can be resourceful… to a fault. I once called the back of a ’97 Saturn station wagon, stationary in a ramshackle garage with a concerning lean, home. My heat for that East Lansing winter was an extension corded space heater sitting on the dash. My unpaid internship working with refugees was only possible because of those meager means and my summer savings. I still hold to those convictions. Like scaling anything, the more there is to keep track of, the more difficult it is to manage with care, integrity and discernment. But I have to be careful.

If I’m not, rigid austerity, which is one of my strengths, can get in the way of aligning time, energy and money toward a better world. To illustrate — maybe this looks like taking years to get around to sourcing round pole framing and salvaged materials to piece together a chicken coop for free. My neighbor, on the other hand, bought lumber at Home Depot and built hers in a weekend. She’s gotten used to frolicking chickens, orange-yolked eggs, and rich, living soils, while I’m still picking up the cheapest eggs I can find at the supermarket to supplement those she sneaks onto our porch.

I’m coming to better understand that spending money with intention can be a very helpful thing. Frugality is necessary. Living below your means is a virtue. And a lot of modern problems are solved (or, at the very least, alleviated) at the scale of home economics. But if I’m throwing all of my weight into minimizing my financial footprint rather than meaningfully directing the dollars I am spending, I’m only doing half the work. And those who are carefully supporting good, yet financially-involved, efforts in the world — those investing in systems geared towards sparking a positive impact instead of solely trying to reduce their own impact ad infinitum — are picking up some of my slack.

Totally negating your impact is a fool’s errand. Better to aim to live well amongst all relations than endeavor to make oneself wholly disappear. You look for those hobbit homes in the Oxford woods, and you’ll see them. It took a lot of time and communal effort to make them happen. And it took money to construct the more conventional, well-used buildings on site. You look in those woods and you’ll see the results of natural building, hands-on learning, and apprenticeships, along with plenty that involved at least one foot in our capitalist economy. The place was wrought from the informal economy, while bolstered by the formal economy. It takes both kinds, and both done well, to build a better world.