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Novak Stoneworks

Life and work one rock at a time. In the summer of 2001, I apprenticed to my stonemason uncle, Tom Ravnik.

I spent hours, weeks, and months loading and unloading trucks full with volcanic stone from Minnesota's Cuyuna Iron Range, spread the stones out, cleaned them up, mixed countless wheelbarrows full of cement with a worn spade shovel, hauled the mud in five-gallon pails, studied my uncle's art and passion, built walls, fireplaces, and chimneys the way his teacher (Old John Brown) taught him, and gen

erally had a lot of fun, working and telling stories on lakeside projects for customers who cared. For half a dozen summers while I was away from college or Eau Claire's public high schools, I would go up north, stay with family, fish with Grandpa, and "pile rocks" with Tom. Those were the best summers of my life, and yet, I felt called to make my living teaching history, geography, and civics--or when those opportunities exhausted themselves, I stumbled into the grocery business, building relationships and markets with farmers and selling local meat. All of my life I've been a student of history, place, and sense of place, and now--with the culture wars blazing and Earth determined to bludgeon our well-deserving and quarrelsome species--I am going back to the things I've loved the most: The Land, simplicity, slowness, physicalness, contrariness, respect for those who've made me what I am and those whose lives I want to help make as beautiful and meaningful as possible.

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With so much cheap, chintzy, superfluous, about-to-be-trashed modern building material and décor available, a person's lucky if his project holds for five or ten years, or maybe even a matter of months. Here at Novak Stoneworks we do things the old-fashioned way. Piling rocks one at a time--with each stone selected for color, shape, and character--your project will honor the laws of gravity (and nature, generally). And when the last stone is set in cement and every detail has been attended to--your jobsite tidied up; my tools stowed away in their requisite places--you will be issued a 400-YEAR GUARANTEE.*

*Unless, of course, your jobsite is beset by volcanism, earthquakes, a biblical flood--or I die.

07/05/2024

Stone patio.

06/02/2024

Making new walls look old.

04/29/2024

God I love building stone saunas.

12/09/2023

Stone sauna with . The best of rural Wisconsin.

Photos by Amber Kersting.

10/14/2023

Replacing vinyl siding with stone.

07/26/2023

Stone oven at the Deutsch Family Farm.

I'd like to do two or three of these things every summer. Sign-up now or send questions and inquires to [email protected].