TFG Events & Workshops

Community Building Project: Tillers International (POSTPONED)

THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO 2025

The Guild heads to Scotts, Michigan, for a weeklong Community Building Project with Tillers International, immediately following the annual Guild conference in Ann Arbor. Tillers teaches essential homesteading skills, with educational offerings that include toolmaking, timber framing, woodworking, coopering, and blacksmithing. Their community includes living history professionals, farmers, and curious learners nationwide and abroad. Tillers is a registered not-for-profit corporation, and its mission extends beyond the dissemination of knowledge: the organization seeks to uplift farmers in Africa and other parts of the world, aiming to transform livelihoods and agricultural practices from the ground up. 

About the Project

This new workshop pavilion will be a four-bay timber frame in white pine, with nail-laminated arch bents, approximately 36'x48' at the posts. In support of Tillers' mission to promote traditional skills, the frame will be hand-cut using hand tools and raised using traditional rope-and-tackle lifting methods as well as draft animals for motive force. 

The frame design provides multiple learning opportunities, and this project will be of particular interest to those who enjoy or want to learn about traditional hand skills for timber frame cutting and raising. The work will be laid out using square rule methods, and there will be evening sessions on tools, rigging, and safety. 

Our hosts will provide camping on-site, with access to campus buildings in case of inclement weather. Meals will be provided by Tillers volunteers - three meals a day plus snacks and endless coffee.