Building a Bothy

My stepdad John had an idea years ago to build a cozy and well crafted lodge on the family farm. Over the past year and some months he's...

John had been mentally designing his bothy for a number of years, and through that process he had a rough idea how much lumber and what...

My childhood friend Rob Parrish owns the company Frontier Mill and Woodworks . He has a mobile sawmill that he can drive anywhere, so we...

The old dog lot cement slab was poured more than 20 years ago, and somewhere in a thaw the cement had cracked, probably due to the ground...

Having completed the foundation in the Fall of 2023, John got started on the blue stone pavers for the floor in March of 2024. We use a...

With the foundation and floor securely in place, the next step was to start the framing of the first level. John started by pulling out...

The next step in the process was to install all the cedar closet liner across the purlins and battens. This would ensure the entire...

To get the bothy safely dry we needed to put the plywood on the roof and then cover it with roof felt. The slate shingles would be done...

With the roof now waterproof, we needed to finish up the insulation around the first level of the bothy and the gable ends. The...

There were gaps that needed to be filled across the framing inside, for this we did a lot of blocking using various sizes of cedar cuts. ...

The stone needed to go all around the outside of the bothy, right up to the roof line on each side. It was going to be a lot of stone...

Kitting out the interior is a work in progress, I've included some of those works here to show how that is coming about for the kitchen,...

We try to have as much fun as possible on the farm, here is a collection of some of that fun.

It's a beautiful place, with beautiful trees, flowers, and other plant life that make every season special. One of the things I miss...

We have all sorts of animals, wild and domestic, on the farm. Here are just a few of them.

When we were growing up, we had many gardens across the farm. My Mom used to sell organic produce as well. Nowadays John plants in the...