Dry Stone Walling Competition

This past October I traveled down to Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky to visit and watch the 10th annual dry stone walling competition held by the Dry Stone Conservancy. At the last minute with a little convincing I jumped in to compete. I just found the photo above today of the competition and you can see me working away on the left. Finding this picture made me reflect on my time down there and I look forward to going back.

Competitive walling was a whole new ball game to me as there are little tricks here and there that can help you during the day. You start with a stint of a completed wall of about 7'. You then have to strip it down to the ground and build it back up in a day. All this while a judge is walking around assessing your craftsmanship.  Not only are you trying to build to the best standard you can, using as much of the original wall stone as possible and matching the existing local style. You have to keep up to the guys working on either side of you. The walls at Shaker Village are about 180 years old and made up of a very brittle lumpy limestone that doesn't respond well to a hammer. Coming from Ontario where we're used to ordering in fesh quarried materials that responds to whatever you tell it, I was a bit out of my element. I remembered working with a master craftsman from the UK a few years back, Stephen Harrison, and he told me that with stone like that in Kentucky, 'all you can do is wall it end in, end out and cross your joints'. So I put my head down, did exactly that and came in second place in the professional class! It was the first time a Canadian has competed in the international competition down there and I'm happy to have represented Canada internationally and have done as well as I did.

(My Finished stint)