Cedar Sense in Waubun Holds Kids’ Workshop on Building Wooden Flags

Cedar Sense, a business in Waubun, held a workshop earlier this month for kids ages 10-17, where they learned how to construct wooden flags like the ones the company sells all over the country.

Michael Vail, Cedar Sense’s owner and CEO, led five young individuals in the Youth Flag Build, giving the kids the tools and knowledge on how to build an American flag out of wood.

“I do coach in the area, so I’m always working with the youth,” said Vail. “Already we have kids that are right around the same age here. One thing that I want to bring into this community is just craftsmanship and how people can work with their hands. Even if you’re not going to be a carpenter or anything like that, it’s still a good trait to know when you get older in life, you got to fix something around the house or something.”

The Youth Flag Build gave the participants a chance to try new things.

“I’ve always been a big fan of woodworking and STEAM-type lessons and classes, but I’ve never done a project like this, so it just sounded really interesting to learn about it,” explained Isabelle, one of the participants. “[It’s] definitely a lot when it comes to the making of the flag, lining everything up, and I’ve never done color stain before, so that was interesting and learning how to do it right.”

“And I really like it. It’s like, really fun,” added participant Justuz. “Mike teaches a lot of stuff. You get to learn a lot of things about, like, measuring, staining stuff.”

The class isn’t just limited to people in Minnesota, either.

“We’ve got people from Fargo that have come here. We’ve got people from around the community, different ages. We had it from 10 to 17 years old,” Vail said. “So we’re actually bringing some of the community together with just, you know, people that maybe not – might not ever see each other. I think it’s just a, it’s a good trait for kids to know. And then tying in our product that we sell all over the country, you know, it’s kind of killing two birds with one stone that way. And then I think it’s a good deal when kids can make something with their own hands and look at it and have pride that, ‘Hey, I built that.'”

Vail also hopes to one day expand the class to other cities.

“It doesn’t take our shop to be able to do this. You can make these flags with just kind of, everybody’s household garage tools,” he added. “We want to be able to, in the future, take this to places like Bemidji, to Grand Forks, maybe work with some of the community leaders in those areas. And once we’ve got kind of a system on how to do it and you know, first, this one right here, probably going to be the you know, the one with the most kinks we got to work out. And the more we do, the better a lot will get at it. And I just think it’s all-around good thing to have in your community.”

The event was free for all participants, who got to keep the flags they made.