Students help build agricultural heritage building
Fleming College carpentry students have started constructing walls for the county’s new agricultural heritage building.
They’re building 35 panels for the Peterborough County Agricultural Heritage Building that’s going up at Lang Pioneer Village.
The walls are being built at the Kawartha Trade and Technology Centre (KTTC), before being assembled on site.
Karen Joplin, Peterborough County fundraising and partnership development manager, announced the partnership between the college and Peterborough County at KTTC Wednesday afternoon.
“Fleming College having the skilled trade centre and having the skill that we need was an amazing partnership and just made sense,” said Joplin.
The design for the heritage building was created by Lett Architects and Mortlock Construction is doing the contracting.
Simon Mokedanz, program coordinator for carpentry techniques and technician programs at Fleming, used the drawings to come up with a plan for the students.
First year students will be constructing the walls, while second year students will oversee their work to make sure it’s up to standard.
Once the walls are completed, they’ll be transported to Lang where the students will assemble them in an old-fashioned barnraising style, adding the finishes afterwards.
Mokedanz said the carpentry techniques and technician programs are often approached to construct community-based projects, but students haven’t worked on one of this size before.
“This is the first one that’s allowed us to build such a largescale project for the community,” he said, adding it also tied in well with this semester’s curriculum.
Ground broke at Lang in November after the heritage building project received nearly $1 million in federal funding. The province had already kicked in $150,000 in May.
Right now, the project is sitting at $1.6 million of its $2-million goal.
To reach that total, Joplin said they’re now looking to community members for in-kind sponsorship and donations.
To create more of a buzz around the building, county staff filmed a video asking television personality Rick Mercer to come for the barn raising, which is slated for the end of March. To help grab Mercer’s attention, county staff are asking citizens to share the video and use the hashtag #RaiseTheBarnRickMercer.
The grand opening of the Peterborough County Agricultural Heritage Building is set for Sept. 24. There’ll be a traditional county fair to celebrate the opening and commemorate Canada’s 150th and Lang’s 50th.
NOTE: The Raise the Barn video can be found online at https://youtu.be/ttC-gtVf0BI.