Nearly 60 craftspeople including carpenters, masons, roofers and their apprentices worked at the historic Shafer Farm, one of Preservation Maryland’s Six-to-Fix projects, as a way of giving back to the local community in recognition of the Center’s 40th anniversary.
The National Historic Preservation Training Center, based in Frederick, Maryland, is a unit of the National Park Service that utilizes historic preservation projects as their main vehicle for teaching preservation philosophy, building crafts, building technology, and project management skills. The labor for these critical projects was donated and materials were purchased by the Burkittsville Preservation Alliance with funding from Preservation Maryland’s Heritage Grant Fund.
Historic Preservation Training Center staff and apprentices focused on several important projects over the course of the day, including:
- Rebuilding and stabilizing the front porch of the historic home
- Repointing and repairing failing brickwork above a second-story window on the home
- Stabilizing a historic meat shed with exterior framing
- Restacking failing stonewalls on the ramp of the historic bank barn
- Constructing nearly a dozen custom window ventilators to mothball the historic home
- Documenting & creating scaled drawings of the historic outbuildings and barn
Historical Significance
Just outside of Burkittsville, a well-preserved small historic community in western Frederick County, lies the Shafer Farm, the site of a Union headquarters during the Civil War Battle of South Mountain in 1862. The farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings have been vacant for nearly 20 years and have suffered as a result of deferred maintenance. With Preservation Maryland’s assistance, the long term goal for the Shafer property to act as a heritage tourism anchor may finally be achievable.