Anyone who wants to help restore the historic Hutmacher farmstead in rural Dunn County will have three upcoming opportunities to help.

The Hutmacher farm was constructed in the Germans from Russia style of stone and mud mortar with timber, straw and mud roofs. Its restoration is a project of Preservation North Dakota.

The group will hold its first work session at the Hutmacher site from May 24 through May 31. The second will be June 14 and 15, and the final in this series will be June 28 and 29.

The May session will feature one day's time with Ed Crocker, an earthen architecture conservationist from Santa Fe, N.M., who will work with participants and talk about conserving original materials.

Workers will help rebuild the roof of the one-story main house, nailing small timbers, laying up branches and straw and covering the materials with a clay mixture.

Other work will involve simple stone masonry to repair the walls, which also will be painted with clay mortar.

The Preservation North Dakota project is partially supported by a grant from the Save America's Treasures program.

For more information see http://prairieplaces.org, call Dale Bentley at 633-2763 or send an e-mail to info@;prairieplaces.org.