One of the unexpected things I learned when I moved to Manitoulin Island, Canada back in the mid-1980s was traditional stoneworking. I’d never done it before coming here and I’ve never seen anyone else do stonework in the old fashioned way from raw stone. Manitoulin is a limestone island and there’s lots of building material here free for the taking. This “taking” is not that easy because it involves prybars and stone hammers and a lot of sweat, but at least there’s usually no cost involved.

The video above records an historic moment at our place. The summer of 2016 is when I took down the scaffolding on one side of my house after reaching the peak with stonework. 30 feet off the ground with a round window, watch above to see what the “scaffold take-down day” looked like, and hear my thoughts on stonework and why I love to do such a crazy, labour-intensive thing.