From 2015 to 2019 (and ongoing!), an ambitious group of organizations, businesses, and volunteers were busy as beavers at the Piper Creek Community Gardens. Together, we've done some cool things like install one of Canada's largest Food Forests and Pollinator Gardens, restore the banks of Piper Creek, and plant lots of new beaver habitat!
But in the summer of 2017, we were sad to see the old iconic barn be demolished for safety reasons. The site looked so empty in spite of all the beautiful plants growing. It's just not the same when you know what it looked like before.
SO, to wrap things up in our final year (2019), we teamed up with our friends at Top Peg Timber Frame Construction and Living Lands Landscape and Design to host a community barn raising that replaced the beloved structure with a goal to break the Guinness World Record for the World's Largest Pollinator Hotel...! With a lot of hard work and persistence, we secured a $25,000 grant from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation to host local timber framers and coordinate the project, plus $27,766 from the Government of Alberta's Community Facility Enhancement Program and $40,000 from Co-Op's Community Spaces program for barn materials, and official approvals (permits) from The City of Red Deer. In 2024, we received $25,000 from the Community Foundations of Canada's Healthy Communities Initiative to move the barn ever close to completion!
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The new barn design is an open-air timber frame structure to harvest rainwater for the planted areas of the site and the walls serve as space for installing artistic and functional pollinator habitat with the help of Living Lands (making it Canada's largest pollinator hotel) and supporting - in a BIG way - the City of Red Deer's Pollinator Parks initiative!
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Check out photos of the barn raising held on the 2019 Alberta Culture Days weekend alongside our Fall Harvest Supper and Garlic City Market - https://www.facebook.com/pg/pipercreekrestorationagriculture/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2378940402433051
Piper Creek Timberframe Barn - constructed by Top Peg Timber Frame Construction and High Peak Timberframing (Sept, 2019), sponsored by Alberta Real Estate Foundation, The Government of Alberta, and Federated Co-Op's "Community Spaces" program.
About the Timber Framers Guild
The Timber Framers Guild (TFG) is committed to connecting with communities and people, sharing the story of timber framing, and learning and teaching through doing.
To that end, they work with localities, non-profit organizations, and coalitions of organizations to build beautiful timber frame structures that will benefit and strengthen the people and places where we all work and live - as well as those far from our own homes. These structures enrich not only the lives of the people they serve - offering new gathering places in the form of farmers' market pavilions, amphitheatres, bridges, and community centers - they enrich the lives of TFG members as together we build skills and knowledge, meet new people, and rally behind a worthy project, working together to bring it to life.
Since 1985, the Timber Framers Guild has raised nearly 100 timber frames for communities across North America and beyond. The majority are public or non-profit buildings.
ReThink Red Deer and supporting organizations are aiming to host a community barn raising with members of the Timber Framers Guild to replace the barn removed in the summer of 2017 at the Piper Creek project site. The new barn is designed as an open-air timber frame structure to demonstrate green building while providing valuable services including rainwater harvesting and pollinator habitat built into the walls to serve as the world's largest pollinator hotel...!
And check out the Raising Pemberton video for an idea of what Timber Frame Barn Raising is all about:
RAISING PEMBERTON • Building Community With The Timber Framers Guild from Ramshackle Pictures on Vimeo.
