Cramming them in at the Kids’ Kabin

Posted on November 14, 2019 by Ian Kinross

Around 2007, my father-in-law Claus was under the gun to squeeze even more grandkids into the little log cabin he had completed in 1998.

Claus and Ann were lifelong learners, enjoying courses at Haliburton’s School for the Arts in summer. Ann honed her pottery and art skills, while Claus learned about the fine art of woodworking — including a course specializing in the use of the router.

Another course that caught Claus’s eye was memoir writing. During that one-week course, he told stories about his childhood in Manitoba, school days, his volunteer work in Africa — and about the little problem he was having fitting all the grandkids into the log cabin.

The title and story are his original; I have added a few subheads and photos. I would add an editor’s note: I recall Claus joking that there was sometimes an excess of emotion when his memoir-writing classmates read their stories — tissues had to be close at hand. Claus, by comparison, shared stories of his life and family with his own sense of humour, and carefully crafted details, without shedding a tear. The emotion — his love of family and pride in his craft — was implicit.

Here is the story he titled: “Cramming them in…”

By Claus Wirsig:

While large and rambling, our log cottage has only two bedrooms and a bunkie. Though a huge living room also lends itself well to accommodation of a pullout double or twin bed in one corer, the growing family size signalled trouble ahead.

All four of our daughters, scattered across the continent, wanted to gather at the cottage for their annual get-togethers. There were also friends to accommodate and the two oldest, Denise and Nadine, were married and already had three children between them. The first grandchildren were aged four and two in the summer of 1996. They liked to romp in the woods, play house, of course, swim when possible, and so on. Their mother, Nadine, suggested what they would really enjoy was a playhouse in the bush they could call their own.

Scouring the hills for cedar

Someone guessed they might even want to sleep in such a house. An idea started to take shape in my mind. Wouldn’t it be nice to build a small cedar log structure with a proper roof, door and real windows? I spend the summer scouring the Haliburton hills and found old, very old, Harvey Macintosh with a fence-post cutting business and a small sawmill operation. Perfect. A descendent of Macintosh apple creator, he had stacks of eight-foot cedar posts and 12-foot brace rails. I picked out about 80 posts of the rather small size I needed and a dozen brace rails of similar diameter.

Peeled, sawn on two sides to a uniform thickness of three and one-half inches, another long story, and dried over the winter, they were ready for my construction project to begin the next spring. In the meantime, I had built a solid full one-inch cedar floor in my garage workshop. It was the exact size, nine feet by 11, to fit within the hundred square feet exemption cut-off for a building permit in the county. The floor boards were solidly mounted on four pressure treated four-by-fours. I also prepared a site behind the cedars quite close to the cottage and hauled in a solid crushed gravel base. That was year one.

The logs fall into place

First thing in spring of 1997, after gardening was properly underway, we hauled the floor to the building site. Then, one by one, the logs were put in place with spaces for the door and four windows, all of which were installed as the building went up. The door I constructed of solid cedar planking. The windows were recycled from an old fruit packing shed in B.C. which my dad had demolished many years earlier and I was able to have transported to Toronto. The three grandchildren, all girls, were delighted to climb over the construction site with growing anticipation of the time they had a real house of their own.

To finish off I designed gable ends that looked like logs set vertically and an asphalt shingle clad roof, all specially designed to be air tight and animal proof. One son-in-law, Ian, helped with shingling the roof. Another, Frank, installed the electric service on an underground line from the switch box in the main cottage that Ann had helped me bury under our front lawn. All was in readiness for the interior finishing — but next year.

Design dreams in the wee hours

The workshop was humming in May and June of 1997. During the winter, I had worked out the designs in my head for four sleeping bunks and other fixtures that would be needed. These design sessions usually came upon me in the middle of the night and robbed me of many hours of sleep, just as they had done the previous winter when I had worked out the plans for the bunkie itself. In my mind, I always thought of it as a bunkie. When it was finished, the kids quickly baptised it “The Kids’ Kabin” with two K’s.

With three grandchildren underfoot and a fourth underway, clearly the least number of sleeping bunks required was four. So, the design provided one set of upper and lower bunks on each side of the cabin. All were attached to the wall with hinges so they could be tucked out of the way against the wall when not needed. The ground floor bunks each hid a large roll-out drawer and had additional space on the floor for other storage including a ladder needed to get to the top bunks.

Windows front and back had hinges and screens for fresh, cooling night air. The window on the side facing the cottage gives a good view of the cottage past the cedar tree trunks. Against the blank wall at the foot of the bunks, I built a corner bench along two sides stretching from the end of the bunks around to the small closet in the opposite corner where the door opens in a tight spot between the closet and the bunks on the other side. I made a bookshelf high over the bench and window at the open wall. The drawers are rarely used and the main function of the closet has been to house the potty that is so handy for the younger children.

“Their eyes sparkled…”

The best inspiration I got in my nocturnal mental wanderings was the construction of a collapsible table between the two sets of bunks, reminiscent of dining tables seen typically in travel trailers. Hinged about 12 inches from the wall, when the single but sturdy supporting leg is clapped inward, the table provides a marvellous card or other game playing space between the bunks and is readily collapsed into a small night stand. Four covered foam mattresses, each 30 inches wide and 72 inches long, and voila! The Kids’ Kabin was ready for business.

The two oldest grandchildren, Alison and Colleen, arrived on Friday evening of the July 1st long weekend. Their eyes sparkled as they came down the lane and I opened the door to the building I had finished not 10 minutes before. They could hardly wait for bedtime. After some excited chatter which we followed on the baby monitor beamed to the cottage, at the age of only five and three, the girls slept right through to morning. They have only rarely spent a cottage night anywhere else since.

The grandkids keep coming!

Two weeks later, their cousin Anna from New York arrived. And so did Chantal, the daughter of Karen’s partner, Stefan. All four bunks were filled each night!

By the spring of 1999, trouble arrived in the shape of newest grandson, Paul. Where were we to put him? The four bunks were occupied. With some reluctance, I converted the nice bench at the end wall to a bed with a 24 by 60 inch foam mattress. It worked like a charm. This was Paul’s special bed.

But life and laws of fertility being what they are, the next year brought another body to the house in the Kids’ Kabin in the form of Rachel. What to do? I designed a slat frame similar to the bunk beds that could be fit between the two lower bunks. Rachel was delighted to be able to sleep between two big cousins. Problem solved. Six kids housed in a four-bunk cabin.

A few years later, yet another challenge arrived in the firm of Karen and Stefan’s new son, Felix. Suggestions anyone?

Epilogue

Now let’s hear from more of the grandkids…

Rachel, now an engineering student, recalls:

“The cabin had an assortment of blankets — the tiger, the red plaid etc. — and Paul and I would call dibs on the best ones. There was always a rotation of Archie comics that travelled between the cabin and the cottage, and I would hunt down the ones that I hadn’t read yet (that summer) all over the property and bring them back to the cabin.”

“It was always the most fun when the cabin was full of cousins; I would stay up late to listen to all of the gossip.”

Felix, the youngest, and now the tallest, writes:

The first memory I have of the cottage is the cabin and the sand box outside of it. I was the youngest of the kids so I slept on the small bench at the edge of the cabin.

I remember having a lot of fun as a young boy. I would sleep with my older sister and my five cousins in a confined space. The cabin reminds me of summer and of nature. I spent a lot of my summer at the cottage in which I slept in the cabin. We swam, went on boat rides, did treasure hunts, had marshmallow fires, played cards and name games and had many fun and memorable moments at the cottage.

I was always amazed that the cabin was built by Claus (grandpa). I remember waiting for the other kids to have pancakes, porridge or eggs and bacon. We would have great conversations late at night.

I was so sad when we could no longer go to the cottage. A big part of my childhood was spent at the cottage and in the cabin so I was glad we could keep a big piece of the cottage. Nadine and Ian’s cottage is very close to the old one. When the old cottage got sold, Ian and Nadine decided to move the cabin to their cottage. Although we cannot go to the old cottage, we can still go to the cabin.

The bluebirds were calling

Posted on August 28, 2019 by Ian Kinross

As we experimented with gardens on our stone terraces, we continued to keep an eye on the eastern bluebird family in our small red bird box. They were busy feeding chicks, the mother and father bluebirds swooping in with food and out with guano.

Earlier in the year, I had attended a naturalist group lecture about bluebirds and learned about a study underway in the Minden area. Local volunteers had built and set up many bluebird boxes in nearby Gelert, Ontario. They were monitoring the effectiveness of the boxes to attract bluebirds, and a university student was preparing a report on the results. The intent was to turn around recent declines in the eastern bluebird population.

I contacted a reporter at the Minden Times, a small but feisty local paper still practising old-fashioned journalism with news, features, and commentary on local affairs. On a sunny Saturday morning, reporter Vanessa Balintec dropped by with her camera and tape recorder. Nadine and I sat with her in our screen porch. As she asked us questions about our experience with hosting bluebird families at Minden Lake, we would occasionally point to the box outside our cottage when one of the adult bluebirds alit on the box: “Oh, oh, oh — look!!”

Vanessa took a nice close-up photo of the male bluebird, with its orange breast and bold blue wings. She wrote the following piece about this small initiative in Minden that hopes to understand the impact of nesting boxes — and to give these birds a fighting chance for the future…

(You can also find this story online at the Minden Times website.)

Eastern bluebirds: A story of success

By Vanessa Balintec

For Ian Kinross and his wife Nadine Wirsig, it was a pleasant surprise to hear that the Haliburton Highlands Field Naturalists were launching an eastern bluebird bird box program along Gelert Road, as they’ve been housing two boxes of their own for over five years at their property in Minden.

“I saw it in the Minden Times and I went to the seminar,” said decade-long cottager Kinross. “I chatted to the guys and I really support their work.”

For years they’ve been watching eastern bluebirds use two little boxes on their property to nest and raise their young. Although they were out of town by the time the HHFN called for their support in putting up the boxes, Kinross arrived back home in time to see a new family of bluebirds getting ready for nesting season.

“They’re just beautiful creatures,” he said. “And it’s kind of like, you feel good that you made this small step of putting up a little box and it actually works, it’s actually attracted the birds. So that’s pretty cool.”

Local teamwork, broader impact

Although they were at it years before the HHFN, the non-profit organization took it to new heights. With the help from U-Links, they paired up with Anna Robbins, now a graduated Trent University biology student, to launch their project. The group has been working since fall to get around 20 boxes erected for this and next year’s summer.

“The field naturalists, we used to have one of our members that had a bluebird trail with nesting boxes and some of the members would go out and do some monitoring,” said Gord Sheehan, treasurer for the HHFN. “So then, when he left the club, we decided we would like to try one of our own, and decided a good route would be along Gelert Road.”

With Robbins’s help, they were able to determine 39 ideal locations for bluebird boxes. While building them is just one part of the process, putting them up proves to be more challenging as some of these locations are privately owned, requiring the HHFN to get permission to build and monitor the boxes for long periods of time.

“All these things, getting people together, getting time, it’s much more of a project than it appears to be,” said Sheehan. “Putting up houses, it’s a piece of cake, right? I’m glad we didn’t do 20 houses on our own.”

Robbins was thrilled to see the enthusiasm of the group behind the project, and was drawn to them because of it.

“I think this one stood out to me the most because it was such a small organization of people who weren’t being paid to do anything, it was all volunteer,” said Robbins. “It was a great little community, and I really liked that.”

Stabilizing the bluebird population

But another big motivator behind the project was to monitor the bluebird population.
“When Shirley was working with bluebirds about 30 years ago, their populations were really low,” said Robbins about HHFN director Shirley Morden. “Now they are increasing, so she wanted to monitor to see how that was going.”

According to Canadian Geographic, during the mid- to late-1900s, the eastern bluebird had a declining population due to the introduction of two competing birds, the house sparrow and the European starling, and loss of habitat due to human development.

It was the work done by bird watchers and bluebird lovers, who began the initial movement of building bluebird birdboxes to aid in their chances of survival, that the population was able to slowly stabilize and become a species of least concern today.

“In addition to that, bluebirds are just loved among bird watchers,” said Robbins. “They’re very beautiful, they have this vibrant blue colour. When you see one up here, it’s very exciting.”

Monitoring the new bird boxes

Today, according to the HHFN, there are 16 bluebird boxes up in total: four along Gelert Road, six along HHFN member Don Kerr’s property, and the other six at Walkabout Farm on Spring Valley Road. Although the other four boxes have yet to go up, Sheehan has already been receiving reports about some of them being in use.

“We have one of the four nests occupied by bluebirds, and last report there were five eggs,” said Sheehan. “The other boxes are empty at this time. We will continue to monitor them for more results.”

Kinross says watching the bluebirds finally fledge and leave their nest is something that reminds him of his own role as a parent.

The cycle of life

“They’re always dealing with these little challenges and it kind of makes you realize that life is a little bit precarious,” said Kinross, who says out of close to six to seven cycles of bluebird watching, only four to five of them have been successful. “‘Cause the parents are busy building the nest, and she’s got to lay the eggs, and they’ve got to raise the chicks and help them fledge successfully. It’s a sweet moment that makes you think about the cycle of life. Also, as us as parents. These are parents working so hard to raise these little babies, and they have a much tougher time.”

For more resources on how to build your own bluebird bird box, visit the Ontario Eastern Bluebird Society at oebs.ca.

Stone terrace gardeners

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Ian Kinross

After being inspired by the terraced hillside gardens of Cinque Terre, Italy, Nadine and I took a trial-and-error approach to gardening our emerging stone terraces at Minden Lake.

In the sunnier area near the lake, a hydrangea flourished, delivering large white blooms as big as sun hats. Hydrangeas love stone — their roots slither under and around it, seeking the cool soil. The big, healthy hydrangea bush was temporarily subdivided while a new terrace was built around it. The baby hydrangeas resulting from the division were gifted to a few of our neighbors. Part of the original root was replanted and will flourish again in the next year or two.

Along with the gardening miracles came a few disasters. A groundhog burrowing near the lake wreaked havoc on our begonias, for example, nibbling the leaves each time the plants attempted to grow. We ended up with some stunted begonias, and none of the colour we thought they might add to the terraces. Live and learn.

Nadine took a page from her parents’ garden at Horseshoe Lake, and planted gladiola bulbs in spring. Their multi-coloured spikes dressed up our hillside garden in summer. The bulbs — and any new bulbs generated that year — would be taken inside to be stored over winter in a cool spot in the basement, then set out again each spring to bloom again.

Butterfly blooms

Likewise, multi-coloured zinnias, grown from seeds saved from Nadine’s parents’ garden, attracted Monarchs and other butterflies. We learned they would produce even more flowers if the first few blooms were nipped off, stimulating the plant to grow more stems sideways and upwards. Zinnia seeds could be easily saved over winter and replanted. We also experimented with a couple of perennial flowers, including a butterfly bush, purchased and grown from seed from a company called William Dam Seeds near Hamilton.

Nadine’s Mom suggested Nasturtiums, which would cascade in green over the stone while putting out bold orange and red blooms. As a bonus, the blooms were edible, with a fresh but mild flavour, perfect for a quick snack near the lake. Further below on a rough stone amphitheatre near the lake, Nadine was nurturing plants including lilies, creeping thyme, perennial geraniums, phlox and other flowers that had taken to the site and climate of Minden Hills.

Wildflowers such as brown-eyed susans and daisies complemented the mix. Wild milkweed was another big draw for the Monarch butterflies.

A taste of Italy

To tip our hat to the terraced gardens of Italy, we set out a couple of small fig trees in pots. They would be brought inside over winter. Nearby I found some wild grape vines, resembling Ontario’s native concord variety. These were replanted next to the farmer’s fence alongside our lot in the hopes they would grow and produce some sweet fruit.

On the stone terraces, the new plants did well. The terraces held moisture and were partially shaded by some young oak and poplar trees. We continued to enrich the sandy soil with some peat moss, worm castings, and home-grown compost.

While most flowers flourished, we also learned what did not work in the sunny spot. After the groundhog had his way with the begonias, we discovered that colourful impatiens were too tender for this hot spot.

An organic approach

Further up from the lake, at the new terrace fronting the little log cabin, we planned a garden that could accommodate more shade. We decided on a natural approach, letting the new terrace area green up by itself, and adding just a few subtle garden accents. These included hostas, propagated from our home in Toronto, and some small pots of shade-tolerant impatiens. These were planted at each end of the new terrace fronting the cabin. To accessorize, we placed the same plants in pots on the stumps of the old beech tree nearby.

Meanwhile, the forest was declaring itself on and around the site of the cabin. A maple tree that been cut down to squeeze the cabin into its new forest home was shooting out stems again. It looked like it would regrow nicely to the north of the cabin. Similarly, some smaller beech trees that were taken down next to the cabin site were starting to bud out from the stumps.

A life force

The Minden flora and fauna were relentless, nesting the human-made structures of wood and stone in their life force and life cycles.

Behind the cabin, a groundhog had established its home, with its circular hole marking the entrance to its underground lair in the sandy soil. In the oak trees above, squirrels chewed off small branches, which would drop to the cabin roof and forest floor, where the acorn bounty could be claimed.

Beneath the soil, tiny blind moles made subterranean tunnels next to the new terrace capstones, pushing up the backfilled sand in a telltale pattern. Chipmunks established new tunnels around the site that would keep them warm in winter. The nesting bluebirds in front of our cottage made regular trips to sit in an old oak branch above the cabin, as if to check our progress.

The final push for the stone terrace project was a second dry-stone retaining wall behind the cabin. By early August, I had got most of it built. I was down to the “B-grade” stone in my pile but I still found a few gems to piece the terrace together.

The design echoed the first terrace built just to the west of the cabin — a straight line with freelance curve ending in a small tree cluster. This would afford breathing room and a safe gravel pathway against the hill sloping above the cabin. The second terrace would also keep away ice in winter.

More sun cut through the trees here, especially in the morning, so we imagined some sun-loving flowers to dress up the terrace there once it was complete. The days were getting shorter in August, and the sky cast shades of pink and purple as the sun set over the Cox barn next door.

Granite capstones: Icing on the cake

Posted on July 11, 2019 by Ian Kinross

A nice capstone will make a stone waller salivate. They are hard to find, but they are the icing on the cake for a dry stone wall, adding architectural detail as well as structural integrity.

As my dry stone terrace rose, I was on the lookout for capstones. Brent Coltman, a neighbour on nearby Horseshoe Lake Road who supplied much of my stone for the terrace project, suggested I pay his Dad a visit.

I met Wayne Coltman at his place south of Minden, in old farm country along the winding Deep Bay Road. In his early 80s, Wayne still works full time in the aggregates business, providing excavation and supplying materials such as gravel and sand for construction. Wayne also keeps his hand in music, playing electric bass for a local band.

Finding a stone mecca

We hopped in Wayne’s white pickup and drove through the old farm on his property, touring his gravel pit before heading up a hill through the forest. We arrived at a small granite quarry littered with gorgeous slabs of pink and grey granite.

I could have my cake and eat it too! The first granite stones that caught my eye would work perfectly for some extra steps leading to the cabin, I thought. They were about four feet wide, two inches thick, and heavy. Wayne and I grabbed the ends, picked them up and walked them to the road.

“I have to take care of the fingers so I can keep playing music,” he joked, as he lifted half of a stone that must have weighed over a hundred pounds and was making my back ache. While he went back to get a bigger machine to haul the stone, I scouted out capstones for the terrace.

The June mosquitoes were feasting on me and seemed to especially enjoy the area behind my ears. I zipped up my jacket and started hauling capstones — picking them up and treading carefully back to the road, or sometimes dragging them if too heavy.

Special delivery

When Wayne returned, we lifted them into the bucket of his front-end loader and bounced back along the road to his house. I got about half of the stones into the back of our minivan, and drove them home carefully along the highway, making sure I did not have to brake in a hurry with the heavy load.

Later, Nadine and I came back to get the other half. Wayne was in his garage doing some welding repairs. He lifted his welding goggles, and put down his torch. We had a nice chat about his farm, which includes a gorgeous pond next to his house.

Back at our cottage on Minden Lake, I used a hand trolley to wheel each stone down to the project site. The terrace was coming up nicely but went slightly off level around its curve. I knew I could bring it up to a better level with some thicker capstones on the curved end. So I got busy getting the thickest stones over there first.

The summer side of life

Across from the cottage, the Bluebirds were busy feeding their chicks — swooping in with the food, and out with the guano. Under our cottage porch, Swallows had nested. The birds were active mornings and evenings, flitting around the farm fields next door.

While the female Swallow was away, I used a stepladder to climb up and see what was going on. The parents had created a soft nest of feathers and twigs on top of their sturdier foundation on top of our porch column. The first chick had broken its speckled egg and hatched, a tiny pink thing with a black beak. Three unbroken eggs showed that three more chicks were on the way.

Capstone dreaming

Working with the capstones, I used a chisel hammer now and again to chip off unruly edges, to get the stones to fit together better. When a stone was a bit wonky, I used little wedges to stabilize it. To get the back edge straight, I fit in some small cheater stones that would look okay once the terrace was backfilled. Finally, I packed in a few small heartstones around the heavy capstones.

You can get into a trance while stone walling — the process triggers a kind of Zen state. You forget the mosquitos and keep walling. In your trance, you investigate, touch and place every piece of stone. There may be thousands in a small terrace like this one, a cascade of shapes, heft, tactility and colour. That night, it’s no wonder you may dream of stone.

Pretty soon the capstones were fitting together nicely on top, bringing the terrace up to a nice level of about 3 feet high. I would have more work to do with the terrace garden, and another retaining wall behind the cabin.

But for now, the icing was on the cake.

Pieces of the puzzle

Posted on July 4, 2019 by Ian Kinross

With a sturdy foundation in place, it was onwards and upwards for the stone garden terrace.

Inside our cottage, Nadine, her mom and a friend were grouping like-minded pieces for a jig-saw puzzle depicting a classic canoe. Outside, I was using the same approach for the stones that would form the second and third courses of the terrace. With like-minded stone close at hand, I could move faster once I started building each course.

Smelling the roses

My dry-stone mentor John Shaw-Rimmington had advised our class at Haliburton School for the Arts to step back now and again — to see from a distance how the stones fit together.

This was the stone-walling equivalent of smelling the roses. Sometimes a stone that looked good up close was clearly out of order when seen from afar, and could be adjusted or replaced before it became embedded in the structure.

So I did a lot of stepping back and peering at the little stone terrace as it rose next to the cabin. In fact, whenever Nadine caught a glance at me stone-walling, she said I usually had my hands on my hips, arms akimbo, peering at the stones. For inspiration, I nestled a pot of pink and white impatiens next to the terrace.

Rocking and rolling

By nudging up the string next to the straight section of terrace, and checking its level, I could chase it upwards in slow motion with the stone-building. Stones that rocked and rolled a bit too much were wedged with thin stone shims to get them to settle down. Each course was carefully packed with hearting to get it tight and ready for the next course.

Next door, the farmer was raking his hay. I could hear the drone of the machine as he swept by. The next day, he came back with the baler and wound the dried hay into huge bundles. They would be wrapped in white plastic, resembling massive puffy marshmallows, and stored outside to give his cows feed through the long winter.

On a misty summer morning, the hay bales loomed large outside our cottage front door.

A special blend

As the terrace wall came up with each course, I began to backfill it with some better soil. I trundled with the wheelbarrow over to our nearby veggie garden. There a special blend of quadruple mix was concocted, using equal parts of garden soil, compost, peat moss and some worm castings.

This new soil mix was a step up from the sandy clay next to the cabin, and would provide a nutrient-rich bed for the terrace garden, once complete.

To get the terrace as level as possible for the final layer of heavy capstones, I used slimmer stones in the fourth, and penultimate, course. For the freelance curve at the south end, I had cheated, using just three layers of larger stone. The curve dipped slightly off level, but I made a mental note to try to fix that with the capstones.

Piece by piece

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Inside our cottage, the wilderness image of a cedar canvas canoe slowly emerged on our card table as Nadine, Ann and Mary Jo worked on the 1,000-piece jigsaw, after some swimming and kayaking in Minden Lake. Outside, the stone wall was rising.

The eagle has landed

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Ian Kinross

My father-in-law Claus had asked that the little log cabin he built for his grandkids at Horseshoe Lake stay in the family. Before he passed away in 2017, Claus had joined Nadine to scout out a possible site for it in the woods near our cottage on Minden Lake.

The next summer, my mother-in-law Ann was preparing to sell the family cottage. She kindly offered to pay for the cabin move.

This promised to be a one-of-a-kind road trip, with a few twists and turns.

Built to last

It was a tiny, pretty cabin, yes. But it was built to last — for at least 100 years, Claus had predicted. The cabin weighed many tons — not a job for few friends over a case of beer on a sunny Saturday.

We spoke to our contractor Bob, who had built our place at Minden Lake. There were two options — dismantle the cabin piece by piece and rebuild it on site, or pick it up intact and move it. Option two had a few challenges attached to it, but seemed the better way to go to keep it simple, and to honour the cabin’s integrity.

Bob referred us to a crane specialist in the Minden area. Chuck Hopkins lives just down the road from us and owns several massive cranes used in construction around the Minden-Haliburton area.

Sizing up the job

Chuck came by to take stock. The cabin would need to be wrapped in a giant sling — like a baby carried by the proverbial stork. It would then be craned on to a trailer and trucked to our cottage. Finally the cabin would be picked up again by crane to be set on its new site.

Chuck advised to leave the front porch intact even though the wider load presented some potential challenges. We did a final clear-out of the cabin’s contents and disconnected the power.

Chuck advised he would move the cabin during a break in his construction schedule. One fateful morning in summer 2018, I got a ping on my phone with this photo attached:

The cabin was on the road!

Earlier that morning, Chuck and his crew had roped up the cabin with heavy straps and lifted it onto a flatbed trailer:

Over hill and dale

The cabin was hauled by Chuck’s pick-up truck up a very steep section of McCracken’s Lane at Horseshoe Lake. It wound its way past the world-class white-water rapids of the Gull River, then hung a left on our cottage road: Summer Lane. When the cabin hit a tight spot on our lane, our neighboring farmer, Casey Cox, came with heavy equipment to bend over a tree to let it pass. The only stop missing on this five-kilometre drive was a detour to the Minden Timmies drive-through.

All told, it was a fine bit of motoring for the little cabin that could…

Chuck and his crew used the crane to place the cabin temporarily on our front lawn, then came back the following week, this time with two cranes. In a delicate demonstration of mighty-machinery skills, they “walked” the cabin inch by inch down a slope next to our cottage to its new site on a level gravel base in the woods. Half the battle was keeping the cranes properly positioned so as not to topple along with their load.

The mission was complete — the eagle had landed. Thanks Ann and Claus!

Nadine and I rolled up our sleeves and spent a morning digging a 40-foot trench, 2 feet deep, to house a new electrical supply. The 1990s red shingle roof was updated. Beds were made and the interior dusted and nested. Next spring we would work on some stone steps and a little garden terrace to nest the cabin in place.

The log cabin was ready for its first winter on Minden Lake.

Stone wall spring training

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Ian Kinross

Like a ball player getting ready for the summer season, I went into spring training — in this case, to flex my dry-stone-walling chops. I needed to be in top shape to tackle a bigger project this summer — a pretty garden terrace to go around the little log cabin Nadine’s father built.

Little cabin awaits its stone terrace. This cedar log cabin was built by my father-in-law Claus for his grandkids. He and my mother-in-law Ann wanted to keep it in the family, so gifted the cabin to our Minden Lake cottage last year.

At the edge of Minden Lake, our stone patio and terraces have been emerging over the past couple of years. Slowly, they’ve brought some order and easy access to a jumbled bit of land near the corner of our lot. We’ve even started to dress up the Italian-inspired terraces in summer with some cascading annuals like orange nasturtium and some lush perennial shrubs such as white hydrangea.

A little piece of Italy…

To bring a little piece of Italy to Minden, Ontario, we had overwintered two fig trees in pots in our cottage basement, ready to put out in the warmer weather. After going into hibernation in the winter months, the fig stems had started to bud out with the warmer March sun through the cottage windows. As well, we had found some hardy Ontario grape vines that might add a Tuscan feel to our Canadian terraces. These had been planted — somewhat optimistically — the previous fall.

Some lemon and fig trees would complete the Italian picture, I thought, but that might be pushing it.

My spring training goal this year was to finish up a little terrace I had started the previous year. Nadine, who was eager to plant gladiolus and dahlias in that area, had flagged this little terrace as a priority. Check!

Foraging for stone

Half the battle in dry stone walling is staging the site — getting the right stone materials in place, close at hand. It had been a tough winter and I began to scrounge for stone on our property. Some was still stuck in ice, but each time I found a nice stone, I flung it towards the spring-training site, and organized it there in rough piles on the snow. For bigger pieces, I carted them in a wheelbarrow across the hard snow-pack.

I foraged for heavier foundation stones, and laid them out side by side to get a sense of how they would fit together. Smaller building stones, and the flat cap stones, were organized in piles. Tiny heart-stones sat in buckets nearby, to be packed in the core of the wall later.

While the Toronto Blue Jays players were playing catch in Florida, Mallard Ducks were perched on the edge of large ice flows on Minden Lake. Deer came out of the woods hungry for spring greens. Canada Geese in honking “V” formation were flying northward.

Deer in early spring on Horseshoe Lake Road, Minden.

After five months of deep freeze, the frost was coming out of the ground.

No spring-training jumping jacks for me, but I did get a workout excavating the stone terrace site with a shovel, and moving wheelbarrows full of sandy soil further up the hill. This would be used later to backfill the terrace.

Then I made some measurements to get the site straight, and used a mallet to pound marker posts into the ground. These would denote the outer border of the wall. A string between the posts gave me an exact level, as well as the terrace boundary.

A solid foundation

Next came the gravel foundation. While the Jays took batting practice, I was thumping down the gravel base of the terrace with a hand tamper — a heavy, square metal tamper attached to a straight wooden pole.

A groundhog nibbled nearby on the first grass exposed by the thaw, and bolted when he saw me. Cows from the neighboring farm ventured further into the valley next door; they too searched for spring grass and gave me puzzled looks through the fence.

Slowly, the little spring-training terrace wall took shape.

I wasn’t feeling much like an athlete. In fact, my back and hips were stiffening up. Besides the stone walling, my recreational ice hockey season was in its home stretch and, in my mid/late-50s, I sometimes felt like a bag of bones after a game.

I took a few stretch breaks to loosen up. A couple of cups of coffee didn’t hurt. Deep breaths of the cold spring air felt like fuel to keep at it. My Dad, Douglas, taught me that trick when I was a kid, well before mindfulness caught on. Stop, close your eyes, take a deep, cool breath through your nose.

And I reminded myself that moving around stone is often more of a mental than physical exercise. Wherever possible, I used leverage and gravity, and tried to go easy on my back.

Blending Zen and elbow grease

Stone-walling itself is the ultimate mindfulness practice — a nice blend of Zen, jig-saw puzzle patience, and some elbow grease. For a small terrace wall like this one, you might go through a tone of stone — and each one has its unique characteristics, colour, heft and purpose.

I was getting there. Nadine dropped by to do some garden cleanup of the area next to the lake. I took a breather, sitting on the unfinished wall as I got ready to put on the final courses of stone.

I was still short a couple of heavy capstones. While driving into town, I spotted some jumbled stone that had been dumped in a “clean-fill” construction waste site next to the road. Eureka! I stopped and completed a lightning-fast SWAT mission to load a couple of fine flat pieces of discarded granite into my minivan.

With the caps in place, my stone-wall spring training was complete.

Now we could sit back for a moment, and visualize the bigger project on tap this summer — a pretty stone garden terrace for the little log cabin that Claus built.

Stone terrace inspiration

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Ian Kinross

Over centuries on the rugged Italian Riviera coast, stone craftsmanship turned steep slopes into sturdy terraces. In turn, the terraces supported a string of colourful seaside villages and vineyards: Cinque Terre.

Italian for “paradise,” in my opinion.

Nadine and I were headed to Italy to attend my cousin’s wedding anniversary near Lucca.

Before our trip, our friend David showed us pictures of the coast he had visited at Cinque Terre, noting that “the stone terracing is pretty stunning.” Looking back, I know I didn’t fully appreciate his comment. Perhaps, I had mused, David was a little too obsessed with stone. Certainly, I had not yet developed my own stone-building obsession.

Taking the mule trail

After a wonderful family event in an elegant villa near Lucca, Nadine and I travelled to the tiny, pretty coastal town of Volastra. it is perched high on the hills overlooking Cinque Terre. Our hotel owner, knowing our Italian vocabulary totalled perhaps 15 words, pulled out a map. She proceeded to give us walking directions in enthusiastic English to the nearest coastal Cinque Terre village, Manarola. “You can take the path here!” she added — pointing to the spot.

We started off on a small road, then caught an ancient set of wide stone steps heading down to the ocean. The steps themselves were tightly constructed of dry stone, originally built to withstand daily mule-trains up and down the hill. After centuries of use, the steps were flattened and polished.

Rounding a corner on the mule trail, we saw the full scope of the stonework that was the foundation for life in Cinque Terre — sweeping curved terraces tracking the coast like elevation lines on a topographical map.

Orchards and gardens occupied the terraces, as well as vineyards that used a small monorail-like system to move the grape harvest up and down the steep hills. Below, the colourful homes and buildings of Manarola clung to the steep coast next to the ocean, also buttressed by stone terracing.

How steep was it? We continued down to the main street and small port of Manarola, where fishers still plied their trade in small ocean-going boats. It was so steep that each boat had to be stored on its trailer on main street, then lifted by a small crane and winched down into the rocky but well-protected harbour. At the end of a fishing day, the boat and catch would be winched back up. Visitors hiked into the rocky harbour for a dip, then relaxed in trattorias in the small town square, enjoying local specialities of pesto, fish and wine.

A fishing boat is lowered by winch into the harbour at Manarola

Interconnections

The five towns of Cinque Terre, and larger hub of La Spezia to the south, are connected to each other by rail, road, boat and walking trails. Knowing we could return by train or boat, Nadine and I set off on hikes each day to explore the interconnected villages. Paradise can be crowded in summer, so we avoided some of the visitor traffic in the towns by hiking through the country.

As the area’s commerce now favoured tourism, some of its original vineyards had gone fallow, and pine trees were putting down roots on the ancient stone terraces. In other areas, farmers continued to nourish grape vines, fruit trees such as lemon, olive and apple and lush vegetable gardens.

Cinque Terre clings to the cliff. In foreground: a fruit tree is harvested

Here and there, we came across masons repairing areas of terracing that were occasionally damaged by flash floods on the steep coast. They used wheelbarrows to transport their tools and stone. There was very little room here for motorized construction machines, so much of the work was by hand. They used a dry stone construction method — carefully stacking the larger stones one-over-two and two-over one, and sloping back into the hill. Behind the face stones, they packed in smaller stones to give the wall integrity. On the wall’s face, they tapped in little wedge stones to keep it tight. On top, they placed heavy stones to keep the wall in place.

A stone terrace gets its close-up.

Solid as a rock

Along its coasts and in its mountains, Italy is said to have 100,000 miles of dry stone walls. Because they are permeable, they retain soil and some moisture while allowing heavier precipitation to wash through. Many have lasted untouched for centuries — works of art and engineering, without mortar — solid as rock. A New York Times article described how citizens of Cinque Terra are reigniting stone building traditions to monitor and repair ancient terraces — to prevent them from washing into the sea. (See NY Times photo of Manarola, included at top of this post).

The road less travelled

We took a bad fork in the trail and ended up clinging to the side of a cliff on a path that was getting narrower by the second. A young Swedish couple hailed us, and gestured for us to turn back — they directed us back to the main trail. We thanked them, and during a brief chat, learned that they were on their honeymoon in Italy.

At the end of a gorgeous hike, we arrived hot and tired in the town of Vernazza. We made a beeline for seats in a breezy patio in the town square. Cooling off with a glass of local white wine, we ordered some pasta to reward our hiking efforts. At the other side of the restaurant, we spotted the young Swedish couple just sitting down, also red-faced from the hike. We paid our waiter to send some wine their way as a surprise.

They caught our eye and smiled at us, and we raised a toast to them. “Cheers! Well done! And thanks again for setting us straight!”

Cooling off

Back in our small hotel in Volastra that night, we wandered over to the town’s only restaurant. Most of the staff were still having a pre-shift chat and smoke, sitting just outside. So we continued through the old part of the town, where a narrow promenade and high stone buildings afforded a cool walk on a warm day.

It was mid-summer and days were above 30 Celsius. The use of stone’s thermal properties to moderate heat are even more important in the heat spikes of the Italian summer, when temperatures can approach 40 Celsius in some spots.

After circling back through the courtyard of the town’s old stone church, we sat down to a local speciality of small whole fish and pasta — and more local wine to wash it down. There we plotted our next set of hikes — including an ambitious one with some steep stretches connecting to the last village of Monterosso al Mare — the only one of the five villages boasting a beach. And we could not miss Riomaggiore, where couple declare their love by placing padlocks on gates along the seaside stroll.

Lovers’ locks on the Oceanside promenade at Rimaggiore

A little piece of Cinque Terre…

Trying to take in all the beauty and expanse of the Italian coast, I thought about the lakeside place we had purchased near Minden, Ontario, north of Toronto, with its steep slopes towards the lake. Not exactly gravity-defying slopes like those in Cinque Terre, but in sore need of some stone garden terracing. Nadine and I had already rolled up our sleeves and built a little stone patio by the lake.

Perhaps I could bring back a little piece of Cinque Terra to our new place in Minden, Ontario?

A purple Hydrangea blooms and thrives on a stone terrace garden in Cinque Terra

kinrosscordless

Tag Archives: Stone terrace gardening