Log Cabin Addendum - The Brandegee Blog

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Log Cabin Addendum
Posted on July 15, 2013

With great reluctance, we have put our log cabin complex on the market. Age has creptup on us. Physical limits now curtail the long walks over our rugged countryside that we loved to take and even the minor chores we once relished have become difficult.

Whoever purchases the place can look forward to many, many quiet pleasures that my wife, family, and friends have had for nearly two decades. One small example is the stone wall sstretching in several directions from the cabin. Inspired by the cabin foundations and the remaining base wall of a bank barn about 50 yards upstream from the cabins, we put some in when we restored our cabins. When the workers suggested simply using the stones from the ancient barn wall, we threatened them with bodily harm. So they did as we asked and built them with red shale stones harvested from nearby streams.

Some stones found their way indoors too, particularly in the living room fireplace and its table-flat hearth stone, over a ton heavy and nearly 8 feet square, its natural edge set into floorboards cut to fit. Nature presented that stone to us when about a dozen such slabs we retossed to the surface in a nearby neighbor’s stream beds by a "hundred year" flood. A backhoe tucked each slab under its arm, much like I’d carry a newspaper, to lug them up our tree-covered drive to the cabin clearing and then place them before the entry and in the rear to floor a patio between the rear of the upper cabin and the stream.

Many other pleasures are more active: hunters and fishermen come from long distances; others love the horseback riding close by; still others jaunt northward a few miles to Shawnee Lake for swimming and boating or to skiing forty minutes away either to the east or north.

We will miss the place profoundly when a new owner takes over, but we’ll never lose the memories of our times with so many favorite people and the many recreational activities we have enjoyed both on our land and within a few miles drive.

The following pages tell more of our cabin story and fill in most of the specifics that people who are interested will want to know.

Related Article with Cabin Photos: Couple combines two old log cabins to create a tranquil retreat

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