Dream cabin
Who says you can't create your own world? Back in the early 1980s, Marjy Anderson and her husband, Edward, both worked in the Twin Cities metro area. She worked at 3M; he worked at the University of Minnesota. But they had a dream. "I always wanted a log house," Marjy says.
So they started looking and found some land just a mile down the road from the farm where Marjy grew up. She remembers walking by the property every day on her way to school. "When I went to grade school, it was pasture land," she says. "There used to be cows here."
Although it was a long 40-minute drive from where they both worked in downtown St. Paul, they bought the land and built their dream log cabin. How hard is it to build a cabin? Daniel Boone didn't need much, after all: an axe, some trees, some mud. No big deal, right?
Not any more. Cabin design and construction have become a fine art. Marjy and Edward researched their cabin design for five years before they started. They learned, for example, a clever trick for keeping cabin logs looking like new.
First, good logs are selected. The Andersons chose lodgepole pine because it is a harder wood.
Then comes the trick. The wet core of the logs are drilled out and filled with insulation. This prevents the logs from cracking and provides better insulation.
"We have no air conditioning," Marjy says. "The logs keep it quite cool in the summertime."
To build their stone fireplace, they used stones they had both picked from farm fields as kids. Others came from a nearby lake.
The cabin is a showcase for Marjy's many antiques. Outside, on the surrounding 5 acres, she shows off her love of gardening.
Life in the country, in the lodgepole pine cabin surrounded by gardens, is a simple life, but one the Andersons would never trade for their old life in the city.
"I don't even have curtains in my windows," says Marjy. "It's a fun way to live. I just love it."
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