Minnetonka man who crafts buckthorn into useful items to appear at Birch Island Woods Plant Sale

It's time for the Friends of BIrch Island Woods Plant Sale, so it must be spring.
You can enjoy this chance to visit the Picha Heritage Farm at 6649 Birch Island Road starting this Friday, May 9. The sale lasts through May 18. The sale, which benefits conservation, education and restoration projects in the Birch Island Woods area, is open from 4-8 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends.
New to the sale this year is buckthorn crafter Dan Saufferer, who will demonstrate how to use cut buckthorn to create garden accents at 11 a.m. Saturdays, May 10 and 11.
Saufferer said he first learned about buckthorn in about 2000.
"I went to a seminar at the Birch Island Woods and they gave everybody an overview of the plant itself and its nature, I guess, and since then, I just decided that it was something that I wanted to take care of and try to rid my city of," the Minnetonka resident said.
A self-employed caretaker, he said he doesn't describe himself as an artist, although he looks at the buckthorn and sees something else.
"I try to find practical uses for something many people don't care to have around," he said of the trellises, birdhouse stands and tomato boxes he fashions of buckthorn. "Resourceful would probably be a better description of myself and what I do with buckthorn. It's something that I see has lots of character and plenty of characteristics you can turn into garden ornaments or landscape features.
"It just depends on the material that you have at hand and your ability to look at something and see it as something else."
He said a friend describes it as somewhere between craft and art.
"Most often I use buckthorn as stakes or as the prop that I'll put something on top of," Saufferer said. "I've put little homes on top -- or condos on a stick is what I like to call them. I've made bird feeders or critter feeders that are open platform things that the squirrels can get into. You can see through them. I'll use cedar I'll see in dumpsters. I don't like to buy any materials.
"I've made arbors and trellises and this year I think I'm going to make some cages for my peonies," he said. "At Birch Island Woods I'm going to have some tomato cages that I made." He also plans to bring an arbor, that will be bid on in a silent auction, a trellis and bird feeders.
"I think I'll build a couple more tomato cages" during the sale, he said, "so people can see that it's really easy and you don't have to be a skilled carpenter to do it. You just have to be resourceful. "
In one recent project, a woman asked him to build items using an old picnic table where her children had celebrated birthdays. He said he made bird feeders "so she could give them to the kids for Christmas and they would have a piece of their past."
He also made a "condo on a stick" for her.
"It turned out great actually," he said. "It's kind of like a place you can look at and imagine you could be there if you were really small. The snow piles on it … The rain falls on it. It turns color. It's kind of magic actually. The buckthorn is just the support."
Of buckthorn, he said. "I think that it would be really smart instead of everybody thinking it was an evil rotten nasty thing … put it to good use.
"Free material is a good thing for a guy like me. I love to play with material, that's what causes me to be as creative as I can be. It's never the same, it's always different."
To contact Saufferer, all 612-747-8318 or stop by the plant sale.

Click here for a list of items available at the plant sale, courtesy of www.fbiw.org.

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