NEAR KARLSTAD, Minn. _ Like hunting camps throughout the Northland, Aspen Acres is a gathering place for friends and family that's steeped in tradition.
That's never more true than during deer season, which continued through Sunday, Nov. 11, in this part of northwest Minnesota.
"The get-together is about 75 percent of the hunt," said Terry Sollund of Karlstad, an owner of the camp with brother Charles Sollund of Karlstad and brothers Greg Dahlin of Karlstad and Blaine Dahlin of Thief River Falls. "You go out and shoot a deer, big deal, but it's fun to have everybody together."
These days, the centerpiece of Aspen Acres is a 20- by 40-foot cabin they converted from an old granary that previously stood on the farm of Greg Dahlin's brother-in-law north of Lake Bronson, Minn.
With two bedrooms on the main floor, a spacious living room and a loft with additional beds upstairs, the cabin today is a far cry from the dusty granary the partners had moved to the site two years ago in March.
"It just sat empty on the farm up there," Greg Dahlin said. "We were after it for a little while, and they wouldn't part with it. Then his kid needed a car. I happened to have one my daughter had grown out of, so I said I'd swap the car for the granary."
The granary was structurally sound, he said.
"The way old-timers built those granaries, everything was two by six," Greg Dahlin said of the framing. "We just gutted it out. It was three separate bins in there. We took the walls down and used that material for the loft and just kind of went from there. We've got some small stuff to do yet."
