My fallow was finished by the first week in July, but I did not put fire to it until the first week in August, because the timber was so green.  Indeed, I did not expect the fire would run at all.  I was, however, agreeably deceived, for I got a very respectable burn, which gave me great help.

As soon as the ground was cool enough, I made a logging Bee, at which I had five yokes of oxen and twenty men, four men to each team.  The teamster selects a good place to commence a heap, generally against some large log which the cattle would be unable to move.  They draw all the logs within a reasonable distance in front of the large log.  The men with hand-spikes roll them, one upon the top of the other, until the heap is seven or eight feet high, and ten or twelve broad.  All the chips, sticks, and rubbish are then picked up and thrown on the top of the heap.  A team and four good men should log and pick an acre a day when the burn has been good.

My hive worked well, for we had five acres logged and set fire to the same evening.  On a dark night, a hundred or two of these large heaps all on fire at once have a very fine effect, and shed a broad glare of light for a considerable distance.  In the month of July in the new settlements, the whole country at night appears lit up by these fires.

I was anxious to commence building my house, so that I might have it ready to receive my wife in before the winter commenced.  My first step towards it was to build a lime-heap.  I calculated I should require for plastering my walls and building my chimneys, about a hundred bushels.

We set to work, accordingly, and built an immense log-heap of all the largest logs I could get together.  It took at least the timber growing on half an acre of land for this purpose, and kept five men and myself busy all day to complete it.  We made a frame of logs on the top of the heap, to keep the stone from falling over the side.  We drew for this purpose twenty cart-loads of lime-stone, which we threw upon the summit of the heap, having broken it small with a sledge-hammer; fire was then applied to the heap, which was consumed by the next morning.  But it left such a mass of hot coals, that it was a week before the lime could be collected and covered.  This is the easiest and most expeditious way of burning lime; but the lime is not so white, and there are more pieces of unburnt stone, which make it not so good for plastering.

I built my house of elm-logs, thirty-six feet long by twenty-four feet wide, which I divided into three rooms on the ground-floor, besides an entrance-hall and staircase, and three bed-rooms up stairs.  I was very busy till October making the shingles,* roofing, cutting out the door and window-spaces, and hewing the logs down inside the house.