My family loves a good work project. My brothers' wives might say we love
them too much.
In May of 2020, just aer our mom's heartbreaking passing, my brother Ken
decided we needed a family project. We needed a distraction from her loss,
from Covid, and were looking for a way to build something to honor her. We
had always talked about building a lean-to at the family camp.
inking we'd source the wood for this project from our own property, on
May 10th my brother and I headed for the woods at the family homestead,
where he lives. is property has been in the family for 220 years. It's where our
grandparents had my dad and his siblings plant a forest of red pines when they
were in their teens. We carefully calculated exactly what we needed and ended
up getting most of it from these woods.
Central to building our lean-to was convincing Ken's neighbor and good friend
Earl to help; thankfully, he enthusiastically said yes.
We decided to build the lean-to in my brother's pole barn. We'd label each
log before dismantling the whole thing and then transport and reconstruct it
at its final destination, along the water's edge of our camp property, facing east.
We felled the trees, dragged them to the barn, peeled the bark off and carefully
selected the ones to start the first row. e magic really started when Earl got out
his special chainsaw and scribe tools.
Earl is a patient crasman who takes accuracy very seriously. Using a
compass fitted with a sharp pencil, he marked lines on each log. His chainsaw
has a grinder attachment that he uses to carve out the center of each log so it
fits snugly with another.
BUILDING
A FAMILY
LEAN-TO
34
LOCALadk
Story & Photography by Anne Brewer
