This July 7-10, we’ll welcome back the spirited students and craftspeople who make up our flagship Woodlanders Gathering. A wide variety of workshops that celebrate nature crafts and rustic arts are offered, and catered meals on the Green energizes students for these long summer days! Please consider joining us for open workshops and remember to buy your full day pass (which includes lunch) or newly available half day pass. The pictured workshop above is Nancy Welch’s Silk Scarf Dying & Painting, which still has openings. At 7 pm Saturday evening, the public and Woodlanders participants are invited to a joyous sing-along at Alley Stage with The Backyard Ukes. Drinks will be available for purchase in the Art Cafe and we suggest a $5 donation. Connect with natural materials, each other and your own hands at the Woodlanders Gathering! 

Dick Anderson recently taught a Log Cabin Restoration workshop, which truly encapsulated our mission of providing educational experiences, cultivating the creativity and organic know-how in our rural community and rehabilitating and preserving our historic buildings on campus. Thank you to all the hard-working hands who took part in preserving this piece of Wisconsin log cabin history. Here is Shake Rag Alley Board President Mike Christensen with his reflections and the finished project pictured below.

“The log cabin at Shake Rag Alley has always been very special to me. In 2007, I was part of a restoration effort to replace the roof, floor, and several rotten logs. Over the past 15 years, another log needed replacing. It had been a telephone pole repurposed to be a log in the 1970s. This weekend, a local cabin builder led a class of four (plus me) to learn how to properly replace a log on a cabin in a historically appropriate way. We sourced a local white oak log (over 90 rings!) about 17 feet long, and in two days, turned it into a new log to breathe new life into this 192 year old cabin. Next month, another class will be chinking the log (putting the mortar above and below the log) to finish it off.  A lot of hard work and planning went into this project, and I’m very proud to have been a part of it.” 

Come create with us!



Meghan Dudle
Program Director