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My name is Michael Hollihn.
I am one of 5 shareholders of Blue Earth Forest-Farm.
I studied food security and top-soil erosion at the University of Victoria.

I then studied sustainable forestry practice at the Eco-Forestry Institute.

Which led me get a diploma in timber frame production at the College of the Rockies.

All of my work to date continues to focus on what i refer to as food and shelter security.

Our collective work within the food-forest and the mind-body is critical to sustain us.

Please email me at my name, one word, at gmail dot com for more information.

Please visit my timber frame website at pranatimberframes dot com.

Please look at the various links and some of my work below.

For all relations and for all the innocent children.

Welcome!

Western-Larch Gazebo and Passively Irrigated Landscape

I use CAD software to take your design into 3D space.

This greatly assists the collaborative design process between the client, the builder and the engineer.

I design for owner builders and companies wanting assistance in timber, ecological, healthy and sustainable design.

I can provide engineered and construction drawings and can further assist with the construction if desired.

The shown image here is a gazebo i designed and built for a client in the interior of British Columbia.

We built this traditional timber frame out of a couple very large old growth Western Larch trees that were unfortunately destined for firewood resale from a large sawmill in the area that no longer was set up to mill large wood.

This is the current tragedy of our modern forests in British Columbia.

I generally make it a rule that i will not work with wood from clear-cuts.

In this case we saw it as a way to salvage such beautiful and tight grain wood from short-sighted pleasure.

The other very interesting side of this project was the ability to use the moisture coming off of the roof during any and all rain events.

Notice the cedar log gutters in the design to facilitate this feature.

We collected several tones of carbon and buried it in swales on the contour of the landscape where the client wanted to plant fruit trees and other favourite perennials. Much of the old rotten trees we found were already full of valuable micorhyzal fungi that hold incredible amounts of moisture and facilitate nutrient absorption to nearby plants.

In many cases we bury the carbon on the surface of the earth forming what is known as a swale or a hugelbed.

In this case we buried the carbon completely as the client wanted to be able to walk under the canopy of the trees in the landscape.

I only use natural finishes with the wood i work with.

With Wester Larch the contrast between the coffee colour heartwood and the cream sapwood is truly breathtaking. Here above is also a good look at the stainless steel brackets that we fabricated to hold the cedar gutters.