In Plymouth, Massachusetts site of the colony built by the Mayflower passengers Matteo Brault spends his days living a 17thcentury life, along with dozens of other reenactors on the modernday Plimoth Plantation.

Brault works fulltime as a 17thcentury style blacksmith, using traditional tools like a grindstone, handmade nails, and large bellows for making the fire hot enough for forging iron and steel. He also helps build traditional shelters.

The simplest homes in town were built using crotchets natural forks in trees as support for the ridgepole of the roof. The walls are built up with “wattle” small sticks for the lattice structure and “daub” a mortar of clay, earth, and grasses. Instead of using the traditional English lime wash to protect the walls, the colonists took advantage of the plentiful wood in America and created clapboard siding by cleaving wood into thin boards.

For the thatch roofs, large bundles of water reed or wheat straw are woven with a giant needle by two people working in tandem (one outside and one inside). “It’s like a giant quilt made of grass,” explains Brault, “which makes a watertight roof that essentially acts as a giant sponge. It absorbs water and laps it off.”

The Plimoth Plantation is open to visitors from March through November. The site also has a native Wampanoag homesite (we will tour in a separate video).

http://www.plimoth.org/whatseedo/17...

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