Any Guesses?

A while ago, Martin discovered a bunch (around 40) bricks in the barn.  They are about the size of a firebrick, but exceptionally light and very crumbly.  We took them to family and friends trying to figure out what they were.  No one seemed to know. One guess was a pumice stone for cleaning large cast iron griddles.  That could have made sense if there was only one, but since we had nearly 4 dozen....

We debated what to do with them.  They were too soft to build with. We didn't want to just throw them away; we had already discarded so much and it just felt too wasteful.

Finally I decided to do a web search to see if I could figure out what they were.

And sure enough, I did. 

They are pottery kiln fire bricks.

I approached the art teachers in the high school where I work and asked if they might have a use for them.  The art teachers were thrilled.  Not only can they possibly use them in the kiln, but they can definitely use them for teaching carving.

We were so excited that we could donate them to the school. A happy ending for all involved.

New home found

The canoe that had been abandoned in the woods behind an tigin is on its way to a new home.  The poor canoe is in need of tender loving care, but may be too far gone to be resuscitated. There is a good chance we may end up putting it out of its misery.

Now we really don't have an outhouse

Originally when we first looked at the property, we thought the barn was in better shape than the house. Then on closing day, Martin went to an tigin only to discover that with above freezing temperatures the snow on the barn roof was melting, which made the leaky, rotten roof obvious.  As the weather has slowly (very slowly) improved, we've realize that the "solid" floor was solid only because it was frozen.  So Martin has begun to remove the rotten flooring (including the outhouse step and seat - also rotten).  

 It was then that Martin discovered the "outhouse" really wasn't built to contain much volume.  There is a granite block only a few inches below ground level.  Kinda scary when you think about it.  We are hoping that the original outhouse had been located somewhere else on the property and this one was added more recently. ( http://www.instructables.com/id/Outhouse/ )