Cordwood Bear Paw for Native American owner

In the spring of 2008 the Midwest Minnesota Community Development Corporation made contact, to inquire as to the possibility of building a cordwood home on the White Earth Reservation in NW Minnesota (50 miles east of Fargo, ND). The original idea was to build a daycare and early childhood center and a home, but, for various reasons the home came first.

Anishinaabeg Cordwood Crew

After many, many months of consultation and conversation, we were on our way to Naytahwaush to begin construction on September 22, 2009. The General Contractor, Robert Zahorski of Clearwater Building and Design was ready with the foundation (radiant in floor heat in a sand bed, using off peak electric hours—3 cents a KW); post and beam cedar frame, 12/12 pitch roof with 2 large bedrooms and a half bath and storage (shingled), a well, a mortar mixer, mortaring supplies and power!) What a great guy to juggle all these parts of the project.
The Native American Group Leader Bill, had been working to gather a cordwood masonry crew. Bill is a very talented individual with a skill set that defies description. Needless to say, he and Robert became our confidants and close friends. We are grateful for time we shared with them and the crew. The staff at MMCDC was most excellent in providing everything needed to make this a success.

1700 sq. ft. cordwood home in Naytahwaush, MN

There is a link that explains more about the home and the project.   http://www.daycreek.com/dc/asp/forum2002/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=2&TopicID=2058&PagePosition=1 The plan is to build 5 more next summer.   There was an interview about the cordwood home on Minnesota Public radio.  That link is at the bottom of the first link.    Give a look-back at the daycreek link (above) as the building progresses.  There is a bottle end medicine wheel built into the wall and a feather in addition to the bear paw.

flato@aol.com
www.daycreek.com/flatau
715-212-2870
715-536-3195

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http://www.daycreek.com/dc/html/dcrflatau3.htm

Tags: Chapter 9 - Cordwood

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 1:57 pm by Strongwood and is filed under Cordwood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.