wood and woodworking equipment, and his bluegrass music. And busy he is. He hates to sit still. “I can’t just sit in the house,” he says. He works on his birdhouses year round, weather permitting. Up by 3:30 every morning and at his workbench around 4 a.m., he produces a good number of birdhouses each day. “I cut ten out today, I put nine together this morning. They were all cut out, I just had to finish them up. But I build seven or eight, maybe ten or twelve at a time.” I asked him what he did when the weather was too bad to go outside. “Sit around and pout,” he admitted. “That’s about it. I build my birdhouses year round, as much as I can. I try to make a habit of it, to keep going.” When I asked him how he became interested in birdhouses, he answered, “When I couldn’t drive any more, and I had to quit bricklaying, I had to do something. I couldn’t just do nothing, I’d go crazy. The lady I was living with, we went walking one morning, and someone had thrown away some pieces of lumber. She said, ‘why don’t you pick those up and build a couple birdhouses?’ That’s what started it.” Not knowing anything in particular about birds when he started, he learned as he went along. “About 20 years ago when I started this, I learned a little bit about the bluebirds and the purple martins. I’d heard of them but didn’t know anything about them. This is not so much about birds, it’s more about the woodworking,” he said. He uses standard carpentry tools: a table saw, a mitre saw, hammer and nails, and screws. “But I use a hand drill to put the big purple martin houses together,” he said. “I get my wood at Groves Hardware in Remington. They’re real nice down there. I give a call down there, and they always bring
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“I build my birdhouses year round, as much as I can. I try to make a habit of it, to keep going.”
it up within a day or two. They know I don’t have any way to get down there and haul it up here. They cut it in four-foot lengths for me.” Each house is made for a particular bird species, he told me. “Different bird, different size hole, different size building. Robin, you have to have a three-sided house, one side completely open. A bluebird needs a small house with about an inchand-a-half hole to enter through. The house wren needs a one-inch hole, and the purple martins go in a two-inch hole. Sparrows, they’ll go in anything they can fit into.” In addition to the birdhouses, he also fashions bat houses, bird feeders, squirrel feeders, and bee traps. All his products are made from pine, and they are all waterproofed, except for the bee traps. The purple martin houses are painted with two coats of paint. But the others are just water sealed. “People like to see the natural grain of the wood,” he explained.
WARRENTON LIFESTYLE
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What’s his bestseller? “The bluebird houses,” he said. But the bee traps are selling really well also right now. “I started last summer making them, and they’ve been going real good, especially in the last month. The trap sits on the shelf, the bees go down in there and will not come back up. They used to be called boring bees, but I think everyone calls them carpenter bees now. I think just about everyone’s got them now, everyone with a wood house or porch.” Palmer has a good stock of all his products, and also takes special orders. “Somebody wants something, I pretty much have it. If I don’t have it, I can make it within a day or two. I have a lot of repeat business… customers will come back year after year.” “I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I hope to do it another 20, but I doubt it though.” Somehow, I think he’ll give it a pretty good shot. As I left, the bluegrass resumed, and he went back to his birdhouses. ❖