Oh my goodness! I love those hats. So very 1930ish. Looks like a scene from an Dead End Kids movie!

I work at Arthurdale Heritage, a non profit that has saved its central buildings. The first head teacher Elsie Ripley Clapp believed in learning about how people lived in the past before studying the present. The schools were originally a Waldorf or Montessori type with classes that were hands-on. I've talked with adults who remembered planting flax, spinning it, and weaving with it. One of the pictures in our museum is of children dressed as colonials and native Americans - so it is possible they did learn about making canoes and that is what the boys are doing. If you go to the Library of Congress (loc.gov) you can find over 150 pix of early Arthurdale. Join us in saving its history and buildings - we seem to be the only Arthurdale in the nation so Googling will find lots more info. Our tours are interesting and fun.

I grew up on a farm with two similar, if not identical, bells mounted on poles as seen in the upper left of this picture. Purely decoration when I was a kid in the '70's, but I was always told these bells were rung at lunch and dinner to signal the family or workers in the fields when a meal was ready. Painfully loud to my young ears when we'd ring these things for fun. Mostly likely very effective at their intended purpose when field work was done by hand/horse decades ago.

"log pig trough fire" works.

"Smoking a log" sounds like a euphemism for something, but I don't want to over-think it too much!

Having grown up in Appalachia this is almost certainly a hog trough. Metal was expensive and wood was both free and heavy, meaning difficult for the hogs to move. I never made one but filled them on Grandpa's and uncles' farms. All leftover food, peelings, whey from making cheese etc., mixed with water and a little grain. After breakfast and before dark. Seven days a week. The reward was bacon, ham and sausage come November.

A kid with a Barlow pocket knife and a pointy stick?? That would bring the SWAT team out this day and age.

It looks to me like they're using fire to hollow out a log, a technique equally known to and used by the Iroquois and the Yanomamó.

I noted the presumably wet rags they have put along the top edge of the burn cavity. They may have read of people making dugout canoes by that method.

This is another view of the house seen in the "log smoking" photo.

Looks like the guys are doing a test run at making a dugout using the Native American method of burning out the hull and using wet rags in lieu of wet moss to keep the edges from burning. Low cost fun using a pocket knife, a rag and a few matches. On the other hand they could be making a bread trough for their mother.

I think they're hollowing the log. The rags are to keep the edges from burning. This was a technique for making canoes, but I can't imagine what is planned for this little log.

Can't help but wonder if they're trying for a small dugout canoe, but more likely to end up with a watering trough - given the apparent age of the log one suspects it will end interestingly.

This photo was actually taken at Arthurdale, WV, the first of several resettlement communities established by the Roosevelt administration during the depression. Reedsville is the neighboring town. Eleanor Roosevelt was especially fond of this project, and took a very active role in its development. The house seen on the photo was the "Arthur Mansion," the former residence of Richard Arthur, a wealthy retired businessman, who was also my uncle's grandfather. The first homesteaders moved into their new Arthurdale homes in 1934, and the mansion was demolished in 1936 (reportedly to Eleanor Roosevelt's dismay). My mother's parents were among the original Arthurdale homesteaders (not all of whom were displaced coal miners, as widely believed). More about Arthurdale at http://www.arthurdaleheritage.org/ .

I'm in a bit of a quandary, why are they making what looks to be a dugout canoe, sharpening a tent stake, in an otherwise upper middle class home setting?

I Googled without a good result and several hundred thousand bad ones.