The Green Barn Workshop
Our Projects
I do a variety of different projects which I am now chronicling on YouTube.
Some of my projects relate to my former career when I worked with my small construction company, Parrott Painting and Finish Carpentry. This would include woodworking, repairs and maintenance of “the Parrott homestead,” and projects like the large oak staircase which I recently completed at Bethany Covenant Church. I almost always have some sort of construction project underway and I have begun to record videos of these.
Other projects relate to hobbies. I am restoring a 1958 MG-A Roadster, a car I used to sit in when I was a kid and that was owned by a neighbor who lived nearby. I am working on a 1950's Case backhoe that my friend Gary Gilmore gave me saying, "If you can get it out of the woods where it is broken down, you can have it." Another project which Gilmore gave me was "The Little Wonder" steam locomotive. It is a full-size historical recreation of the first logging locomotive in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. I have built an engine shed, had the locomotive boiler tested for safety, and I am now laying narrow-gauge railway track to build a small operational railway.
Other projects which I am also chronicling relate to research on culture, language, and history for my writing. In my current novel many of the modern technologies are no longer available, so steam railways, iron working, and mining have a new importance. In the future I hope to explore farming in the northern latitudes, also brewing, and textiles and other traditional crafts needed for survival in the far north. My goal is to post videos showing some of my travels to Sweden and elsewhere to explore these topics.
First Drive Oct 23
This is the culmination of a couple of years of work on the mechanical elements of my 1958 MGA project - the car I used to sit in as a kid up in the neighborhood by Juniata School in DuBois.
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Bear Visit
Tucker alerted Leslie that there was a bear in the yard... he checked out her garden, then went up on the terrace to eat some pears and do a back scratch on the one apple
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Building garage
This video shows the stages of building a new garage connected to our house. It was begun during the early days of the Covid pandemic (March 2020) and fully completed only recently.
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Fall Steam Up of Full Size 1870's Locomotive Replica
Gary Gilmore who built this locomotive stops by to give a lesson on how to safely build up a head of steam and run the engine.
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