Thanks to all of helpers, we had a great day with our community working to get the outbuildings closer to be ready for use! The Barn Stormers helped make the place a bit safer, and took out some building innards to make more room. Followed by the Lumber Barons moving and sorting good lumber. Trail Blazers and Clean Up crew making the trails passable and buildings cleaner!
Join us as you can for our first annual Clean-Up day on 13 May 2023 at 9 am until we are done.
First, thanks for all the excitement many of you expressed to us about the folk school and for the offers of help. This is your first of many chances to be a Friend of the School. We are planning the first work day at the property. Details follow:
Why: Things have to happen before classes can be hosted.
Who: Any folks that want to lend a hand. Please RSVP if you think you will be able to make it.
When: Saturday, 13 May 2023 from 0900 until whenever we’ve had enough. Most tasks are outside so if the weather is crappy we will postpone.
Where: 13133 Wild Turkey Road, Welch MN 55089
What: There will be a number of tasks available, some require a particular set of skills (said in a Liam Neeson voice), others just require willing hands with work gloves. If you are the kind who wants to know what you are getting into the current list is below.
We’ll plan to have food and drink for everyone. The menu is not set but will probably be simple food, either grillables or crockpotables (That’s a word. People say that.)
If you can’t make it this time but would still like to help don’t worry. It is unlikely we will run out of work!
If you have no interest in helping dig us out of this hole we got ourselves into, that’s cool too. Let me know and I won’t spam you going forward with no hurt feelings.
Again, please let us know if you plan to come and if you have a preferred task so we can properly plan logistics.
Take care and thanks again and always for your support, even if it is just in the form of positive thoughts and cats belly rubs sent our way.
Martin and Heather
List of Tasks
Lumber relocation: Feng Shui with lumber! There is a pile of salvaged lumber in the future interim blacksmith shop that needs to be moved before improvements to the building can be undertaken. Goal is to move to another out building using a truck and trailer. Stretch goals include triaging good wood from bad, removing any remaining nails from good wood, and potentially building a rack with some of the wood to get the rest off the ground.
Trail/woods maintenance: A lovely walk in the woods with a chainsaw! The wooded 40 acres has about 3 miles of trails on them that haven’t been maintained in a while. A number of trees and branches have blown down across the trails that should be made safe. Additionally there is some random old garbage back in the woodline like most old farms. We’d like to remove what can and tag what we need to come back to with more mechanical advantage. There may also be buckthorn to ruthlessly murder if that does it for you. Note, it is tick season so dress appropriate to your desired level of tick affection!
Barn Demolition: Do you play Jenga just to watch it fall? This may be for you! Unfortunately the large barn went down years ago and the carcass of it is still standing. I’d like to remove as much of the potential energy I can from it and make it a less attractive nuisance. It is mostly going to consist of getting a chain or rope around a bit and pulling with a tractor or truck until it falls down more. Stretch goals will be to save any bits worth it and potentially get the stuff not worth saving or burning into a roll off dumpster.
Light Demolition: For people who play Jenga by the rules. Two of the buildings that we want to still be standing by the end of the day need the interiors opened up without pulling down load bearing walls or beams.
Brick sorting and relocation: Moving lumber not dirty enough for you? We have a pile of bricks from the house when it was remodeled. They are currently in a messy pile, many with mortar attached. We’d like to sort good from bad, chip the mortar of the good and stack anything good onto pallets to be moved by mechanical advantage. Good bricks may eventually be made into the base of a woodfired oven or a start of a medieval tower depending on whether Heather or I get our way (your first guess on who wants what is probably wrong). This one is a low priority unless someone has a jones for hittin’ bricks or we have more people than we know what to do with.
Furniture Repair and Cleaning – especially if it is raining, you can work in the Grain Barn to clean up and pull together the furniture that is there, sweep out old filth, and fix up shelving.
We’ll probably have various other tasks that come up by then. Maybe something about an Nemean Lion or Augean stables?
Personally, I’m old and lazy so I will try to have as much mechanical advantage lined up for the day. If you have tools/machines suitable for any of these tasks you are more than welcome to bring them.
This is just an old school mechanic trying to learn new tricks.
