TFG Blog

The workshop managers and a few others had already been on-site for a few days when I arrived in Tennessee for the Hidden Trace Farm Community Building Workshop. This 2-week workshop will culminate in the raising of a pavilion that will measure 78-½ feet drip line to drip line and will be 111 feet long and 28 feet tall. The eight-bent frame design is comprised of over 470 southern pine timbers and glulams (for the 42-foot rafters) and over 30,000 board feet, grabbing a large volume of space with no interior posts and making it an ideal choice for a sports pavilion. The pavilion has been designed by Joe Miller of Fire Tower Engineered Timber to accommodate both full-size high school basketball and volleyball courts.

Hidden Trace Farm is very near the historic Natchez Trace, which originally was a geologic ridgeline path used in prehistoric times by animals such as bison to move through their grazing range and to the salt licks in Middle Tennessee, in today’s Nashville area. Improved first by indigenous people for trade and to expand their settlements, under President Thomas Jefferson it became the first road from Daniel Boone’s settlement to the Mississippi River. 

Hidden Trace Farm is a place where communities at risk in the greater Nashville area can come for a variety of activities, including recreation and fundraising. Serving Nashville youth, battered women’s shelters, and veterans groups, among others, the farm is being developed further for this purpose as well as to support learning about the history of the area. 

 View from the work site. 

7,000 square feet under tent, and a 35,000 square foot work site. For perspective, the slab is 6,000 square feet, with 43 foot glulam rafters on the 60 foot wide slab. 

 Below, a canted wall section being pre-fit by the pre-fabrication crew, with a close-up shot of the canted wall with the half-laps notched. 

The day ended sunny and dry, with a beautiful autumnal sunset. 

Click on a photo to enlarge.

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Posted Nov 5, 2020 3:45 PM PST. Edited on Nov 5, 2020 4:04 PM.report