Brief

A member of a local farming family that often hires agricultural college students to do summer work approached us with a job we just couldn’t turn down: a memorial jetty at a young student’s favourite fishing spot.

The young man was one of her summer students during the first Covid pandemic year. He was the life and soul of the party, keeping everyone’s spirits up and getting everyone involved. He loved to fish and kayak in the large lake on the farm during his free time, and decided to stay on for a full season. Tragically, he died in a work accident soon after returning to his family farm.

His younger brother was now doing a summer at our client’s farm and his parents were due to visit to collect him in about a month. The client hoped to surprise them, and the rest of her family and employees, with a memorial to a young man who had made their lives brighter in the pandemic.

Solution

We installed an aluminum framed T-shaped jetty with a 10m walkway out to a 5 by 2.5m end section in a lake around the back of the farm. It’s near an area where we do a lot of other work, so seeing our van around wasn’t unusual, and we were able to bring in our equipment and quickly finish the installation without any suspicions. The client had a little more difficulty keeping things quiet - she and her daughter were the only two people even in her family who knew of this plan, and had to be very careful not to ruin the surprise!

Challenges

The main challenge for us was the timescale. We usually have a lead time of 6-8 weeks, and this came with a deadline of 4 weeks, in the height of summer, our busiest time. However, the Bakers are a farming family and this struck a chord with us. We decided to pull out all the stops in tribute to this young man, and we were proud to receive photos from the client of the young man’s family enjoying the evening sun in his favorite fishing spot.