TFG Events & Workshops

Daniel Troth

GreenTech Construction, Owner

Dan joined the Guild in 1986 and attended the conference at Vermont's Marlboro College after being introduced to joinery at Tedd Benson's Alstead, New Hampshire, workshop. In 1987, under the tutelage of TFG icon Randy Nash, he dismantled his first Pennsylvania forebay barn in Ohio and reassembled it into a barn home in upstate New York. Currently, his company GreenTech Construction builds custom homes and, whenever possible, works to repurpose historic timber frame barns and houses in Ohio. As a founding member and vice-president of the non-profit Friends of Ohio Barns, he has worked over these past 22 years to raise awareness of our endangered structures and their place in Ohio's history. To that end, the group helped the historic barn become one of the state's Official Symbols upon the signing of Senate Bill 86. Born in 1953 and approaching late middle age he feels blessed to be engaged in work that needs to be done.

greentechconstruction.com

Presentation

The Barn Raisers
We were once all farmers. Yesteryear's timber framers built nearly all of our barns, houses, churches, schools, bridges, etc. using the traditional joinery that had been passed down through the generations. Today's timber framers work to keep this tradition alive with the added benefit of forklifts and cranes powered by gas and electricity, while employing the power of computers and CNC machines to design, construct, and erect our new frames. We now wear hard hats, steel-toed boots, fancy gloves, and fall-arresting safety harnesses, and drink Gatorade and protein shakes. Without the aid of any of the aforementioned, we wonder how could our pioneer ancestors possibly have managed to build and raise our beautiful barns over a nearly two-hundred-year period? Very little has been written about the barn builders, their skills, and the techniques they brought to the task. But fortunately for us, the invention of photography presented the opportunity to capture the moment with a picture where all gathered to celebrate the raising of the most important structure on the farm, the icons of our agrarian past. Many of those photos have survived and they help to tell us our story: one of hard work, sacrifice, perseverance, pride, and community that serve to give us roots. We stand on their shoulders and our efforts to preserve and celebrate our barns honors and pays tribute to them. We owe it to future generations.