From Woods to Home
Brian Donahue and Faith Rand are co-owners of the conserved Bascom Hollow Farm in Gill MA, a 170-acre working farm home to forests, fields and wetlands. Faith, Brian and their children, along with a host of local timber framers, builders and woodworkers crafted a beautiful timber frame home using trees harvested from the Bascom Hollow woodlot.
They selected woods for the house primarily using low-grade materials removed during the course of timber stand improvement cutting. “You can build a top-grade dwelling out of low-grade timber,” says Brian, which is why they decided to build their frame using hemlock. They used peeled sugar maple, elm, beech, hornbeam and hickory saplings for balusters and handrails, bringing, as Brian describes it, a “youthful energy to the home.”
Brian Donahue reflects on the “woods to home” building process, “We need to take the time to reconnect the sources of our lives to the landscape we inhabit, and to involve our children not only in growing food, but in harvesting trees and building houses. The benefits of local wood ripple outward. Good woodland management can create wildlife habitat, improve forest health, and also support the local wood economy.”
