The Leland Cooperative Garden will soon get a new shed, thanks to an effort from garden member Alex Klosterkemper.
After a 40-foot tall spruce tree fell in his yard following a storm in late 2020, Klosterkemper knew he wanted to do something with the wood. Though he does not have a background in woodworking, taking a timber frame course was something he really wanted to do.
He thought that using the wood to create a shed would be a good idea, so he brought up the idea to other gardeners at the monthly Leland Garden Coordination meeting. He suggested hosting a timber frame workshop and interested people could all split the cost. Two spots would be offered for free, as the gardeners decided that they did not want cost to be a barrier for participation.
“When we moved to JP five years ago, I really got connected to the garden,” Klosterkemper told the Gazette. “I found it a beautiful place,” and “ever since, I’ve been involved in it.”
There is an existing shed at the garden, but the group has outgrown it. That, too, was built by community members and has since been moved to a different location in the garden. It will be used to store hand tools and other smaller items.
The new, larger shed has a transparent roof so it can partially be used as a greenhouse as well.
“The idea is to really use it for early season starters,” he said, which has “always been a problem for the garden.”
He said that he first contacted the Shelter Institute in Maine in early 2021 and was “quickly” connected to the Timber Framers Guild and Mack Magee.
Magee connected Klosterkemper with Adam Miller, who would teach the course and help with refinement of Klosterkemper’s original sketch of the shed.
The workshop was five days long, and included lumber at a reduced cost. There were concerns that the wood from the tree that had fallen in Klosterkemper’s yard was not strong enough to use for the shed frame, so it was used for siding instead.
The group received a $3,000 grant from the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund Grow Grant program to “‘offer at least two scholarship spots at the workshop to youth in disadvantaged communities that are looking for work experience and job opportunities,’” according to a project history written by Klosterkemper.
“The big lag was getting the funding and the grant,” he said. Following that, an application process commenced in search of young people ages 18-35 “who could use timber framing skills in some way in their line of work or who would be interested in pursuing a career in timer framing,” Klosterkemper wrote.
After two winners were chosen, two other applicants were able to raise their own funds and join the team, making it eight.
“The next five days were intense,” Klosterkemper wrote. “Students were feeling like they were drinking from a firehose—learning how to read plans, thinking three-dimensionally, using tools they never used before.”
The group started out by only using hand-powered tools such as chisels, mallets, saws, and hand borers, but eventually had to bring in power tools in order to meet the deadline.
Following the raising of the frame, the Trustees offered some of its annual garden budget and other donations were sought. Lowes provided a gift card for hardware like nails and screws, Hyde Park Masonry and Landscape donated gravel for the shed floor and the area around it, and ePlast was chosen as the provider of the greenhouse roof.
Between November of last year and June of this year, workshop participants as well as other volunteers installed siding, gravel, creating windows, and installing the roof.
A month ago, the door was put in, and a ribbon cutting//oiling ceremony will take place on August 20.
“One thing everyone can do is put the oil on,” Klosterkemper said. “Everybody can participate and have a feeling that they helped build the shed. That’s the idea of the oil.”
The oil was donated by Autumn Peterson, a board member of the Timber Framers Guild, he said. “It just came together nicely.”
He added that he appreciates that this shed is “in the community, for the community, by the community.”
Klosterkemper wrote, “It’s been such an incredible journey for the garden, the students, and the community learning new skills, working together with new friends and seeing this shed come together! Especially during the unprecedented times of the Covid pandemic when many were struggling with social isolation, financial challenges, and general stagnation we tried to navigate and found great fun in working and growing together and building something long-lasting for the community.”
The shed oiling and ribbon cutting will take place on Sat., Aug. 20 from 10am-2pm at the Leland Cooperative Garden. The oiling will happen from 10am-12pm, with a ribbon cutting at noon. Followed by drinks, snacks, and games until 2pm.