https://www.wsj.com/articles/upstate-new-york-thomas-phifer-11650696938

In a spot overlooking a meadow in upstate New York, Thomas Phifer and his wife, Jean, have set up house in a handful of black cabins as tightly shingled as the wing feathers of a starling. The cedar shakes, rows and rows of them, hide all but 3 inches of their 30-inch lengths. “There was a moment halfway through, and these guys had been nailing shingles up, it seemed like for their entire lives,” Phifer remembers. “I have to say, there was a little bit of, ‘What did we get ourselves into here? Who are these nutty, nutty people?’ ”

After the shingles came the pine tar, applied in gloppy brush loads. It oozed down the sides of the cabins and took weeks to dry, attracting layers of dust and pollen from the meadow. A kind of contiguous open-air living room, the field is rutted with pathways that connect the six structures—three for living and working, three for sleeping, some one-story, some two.

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