Cabin Work Weekend 2026

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, where many families have a cabin. Going “up to the lake” or “up north” is a common summer activity. My mother’s extended family has a cabin was built in 1923 that has been used and loved by multiple generations. When my mom was growing up, they spent the entire summer at the cabin with a large family and no electricity or running water. Today the cabin is an LLC with nine owners, a modern kitchen, a dishwasher, and wifi.

I love the cabin and am one of the owners. The other owners live farther away, so Wayne does many chores at the cabin. He does most of the mowing, in addition to mowing our own large yarn. I do the bookkeeping and manage the reservations, among other things. We both do a lot.

When one family owns a cabin by themselves they can make all the decisions, but also bear all the cost, and must do or hire out all the work. Going to the cabin for the weekend often ends up being 90% mowing the lawn and doing chores, following by 10% relaxing. Having nine owners spreads out the cost and work, but also involves getting everyone to participate.

We usually have a cabin work weekend to knock off some big projects, and do spring cleaning and yard work. The last couple of years Memorial Weekend has been chosen so that we can work on Saturday and Sunday, and then relax on Monday. Some years more people are able to participate than others. We had a good crowd this year of close to 20 people, including friends who have spent more time at the cabin than some of the LLC members. We had a full house with my sister and her husband, our friends, our niece, and a cousin. Other participants stayed at the cabin, and at second homes near the cabin owned by my cousin and by my uncle.

On Friday of Memorial Weekend my uncle texted me a photo of a new resident in the neighborhood. This guy was photographed around the corner from the cabin property. Later he was seen along the lakeshore north of us, and in the woods next to the road on the north side of the lake.

I am not much of a spring cleaning person, but sorting and purging in our house is an ongoing process. We moved into my parents house in 2019, adding our stuff to their completely furnished home. We have come a long way, but it seems like a never ending process. Things that belonged to my parents need to be reviewed with my sister. Living under the basement stairs is a life size gnome that my mom made years ago. Many people consider it on the creepy side, and Wayne was pressuring me to get rid of it, possibly even throwing it in the trash. That seemed sad and extreme, but I agreed to review it with Betsy and get some feedback during Work Weekend. The reaction was very strong that we were not to get rid of the gnome. He went back under the stairs for now, to be dealt with in the future.

Spring cleaning inside the cabin is one of the work weekend tasks. My cousin, his wife, and their daughter and son-in-law were lodging there, so not as much cleaning was done as a normal year. However Erika vacuumed the mounted deer head! I did not think it had ever been cleaned before, but my cousin told me that last year she vacuumed off spider webs that had probably been there for over 70 years.

One of the big tasks for this year was to replace the flooring and railings of a deck overlooking the lake. A neighbor friend who is a very capable handyman had already removed the original decking and ordered replacement materials, so a team of workers made quick work of completing this project.

The other big task was adding skirting boards around the base of the cabin, to protect the bottom edges from rotting. That project was just barely finished by the end of the weekend.

We all know there are many different variations of every color. Red is no exception. Somehow the red paint color used for the skirting did not match the red on the rest of the cabin. And in fact there were already two different colors of red used. This will be remedied the next time the entire cabin is repainted. The color is supposed to be a very specific shade of red, called Falu or Falun, used on Swedish barns.

Another big task during work weekend was weeding. It is endless. No matter what method is used to try to keep them at bay, rocks, mulch, a layer of plastic, it doesn’t matter, the weeds are back in a matter of weeks.

My assignment for the weekend was to provide lunches for the group, as well as part of the dinner on Saturday, paid for with cabin LLC funds. This involved a trip to Fergus Falls on Friday with stops at three different stores. Unfortunately, I had a fender bender with another driver when we were both trying to back out of the Aldi parking lot. No one was hurt, the damage was minimal, our car is old and still drivable. We will not be making a claim. Later Wayne was able to fix up the bumper and make the dent pop back out using a blow dryer.

Before lunch on Saturday, someone had to go get the picnic tables that had been stored for the winter in the syrup shed.

Lunch consisted of a sandwich bar, chips, veggies, hummus, and fruit.

I made some cookies for the group. My cousin provided brownies that were amazing, and that she is going to be selling as a side gig in the Twin Cities. Check out the Facebook page for Sky Brownies. Or if you live in the area, she will be selling them at her first market at Daytons Bluff Community Center in St. Paul on Friday, June 26th from 3 – 6 PM.

My uncle cooked steak and salmon on the grill for the dinner main course. Providing excellent food for the group is a way to entice people to come to cabin events with the word “work” in them.

There was a bird nest on top of an outside light fixture on the side of the cabin.

The nest was taken down as part of cabin cleaning, but returned when we realized there were four eggs inside!

There is a cupboard at the cabin stuffed with random life jackets. My sister brought two more from her home, so I pulled them all outside to sort and inventory. It was like one of those scenes with more and more things coming out of a Volkswagen Bug. I don’t know how they all fit in the space. The pile in the photo below are rejects that were old and more than needed.

The dock was set up in the water, a challenging task involving hauling it over rocks using rope attached to a truck. Sometimes Wayne ends up doing this at a different time with whatever helper he can rustle up. The swim raft also got put in the water. It was nice that both of these tasks were out of the way and we did not have to bribe friends to come and help later.

Everyone thought the weekend was a success. My niece, who traveled from Michigan, even thought it was more fun than the annual family reunion in July.

After they left, my sister reminded me to pull the seed stalks off the rhubarb plants in our yard. What? It seemed like just a few days earlier there was nothing growing yet. Now there were rhubarb stalks big enough to pick, buried in tons of weeds.

Our friends who had come for work weekend stayed over another night after everyone else went home. Steven and Wayne wanted to take advantage of the excellent fishing conditions. Mary Lou is a knitter and is now learning to weave. She finished an adorable knitted duck, and I started knitting a sheep, both from the Mouche & Friends book. I helped her warp a rigid heddle loom weaving project that she could finish at home. I sold my 15″ Schacht Cricket Rigid Heddle loom with all the accessories to Mary Lou, and will be buying myself a wider rigid heddle loom.

We do not have any big plans for this summer. There will be a few short runs to the Twin Cities, the annual family reunion at the cabin in July, and several groups of people coming here to our house and the cabin. I am looking forward to being where we are, and having time to work on my projects in between hosting guests.