AVON — A timber frame workshop will be held on Saturday, May 17, at Maine Mountain Timber Frames. Learn about timber framing and benefit the barn raising at the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center. Participants will work on a piece of the Norlands barn through its various stages so it is ready for raising day later this spring.

Working as part of a team, participants will engage in an introduction to timber frame basics including the tools of the trade; roughing out timbers with power tools; chiseling mortise; and using joinery techniques to assure proper fit.

A $50 registration fee includes materials, lunch, snacks and instruction. Space is limited. Register by May 9 by calling 207-897-4366 or emailing programs@norlands.org.

Workshop presenters from Maine Mountain Timber Frames are Jence Carlson and Katherine Jones-Lippy. In their workshop they use traditional joinery techniques to craft timber frames large and small. A founding principle of their company is to make timber frames accessible to as many people as possible.

The Washburn-Norlands Living History Center in Livermore is Maine’s oldest living history farm and home of the Washburn estate. For 40 years, the Norlands has continued a multi-generational legacy of unique, interactive 19th-century living history education for thousands of school children and adults. Today, the 445-acre property includes a stately Victorian country mansion, a granite library, a Universalist meetinghouse, a one-room schoolhouse, large fields and farmland but it’s missing a barn.

Five years ago a disastrous fire took the barn and with it the heart of the working farm; the primary classroom for school programs, tours, and live-ins. Read more about the Raise the Barn project at www.norlands.org.