In early October, the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Training Center completed a day of service at the historic Shafer Farm.
Nearly 60 craftspeople including carpenters, masons, roofers and their apprentices worked at the historic Shafer Farm, one of Preservation Maryland’s Six-to-Fix projects, as a way of giving back to the local community in recognition of the Center’s 40th anniversary. The National Historic Preservation Training Center, based in Frederick, Maryland, is a unit of the National Park Service that utilizes historic preservation projects as their main vehicle for teaching preservation philosophy, building crafts, building technology, and project management skills.
The Center’s staff focused on several important projects over the course of the day, including:
- Rebuilding and stabilizing the front porch of the historic home
- Repointing and repairing failing brickwork above a second story window on the home
- Stabilizing a historic meat shed with exterior framing
- Restacking failing stonewalls on the ramp of the historic bank barn
- Constructing nearly a dozen custom window ventilators to mothball the historic home
- Documenting & creating scaled drawings of the historic outbuildings and barn
The labor for these critical projects was donated and materials were purchased by the Burkittsville Preservation Alliance with funding from Preservation Maryland’s Heritage Grant Fund.
Members of the Burkittsville Preservation Association with Moss Rudley, Superintendent of Training Center and Preservation Maryland Executive Director, Nicholas Redding.
Moving forward, the next goal is to stabilize a failing western wall on the historic house to provide time for fundraising and reuse planning. The Heritage Grant provided to this project will also support this critical effort.