February 17, 2010
My little piece of Heaven
About a year ago I mentioned that the focus of my blog would change to my inheritance, to my farm. Little do we know when we make predictions like that how much our lives will change. Here we are a year later and still have not even begun work on my farm. While life has crept in our plans and saving the money to go further has ceased due to necessity, we do have plans to get started this summer. I am writing now to give a full account of the work it will take to reclaim this land, renovate this house, claim our dream.
I love this piece of land that my father grew up on, my grandfather grew up on, and my great grandfather bought. It was bought in 1939 after it was lost many times during the great depression by many different families. The original house was two rooms upstairs, no door in between to keep heat flowing, and a “master bedroom” downstairs with an all purpose room where cooking and living would have taken place. The wood burning stove was in the all purpose room and the chimney went up the center of the house to keep it as warm as possible, though my father tells me that there would be frost on his blankets on winter mornings growing up. I believe (but I am not certain as the deed is old and difficult to read) that that house was originally built in 1893. In the 50’s both a basement and an addition was added on to the left of the house that would be a large eat-in kitchen, the whole length of one side of the house. They also added a front porch at that time. There was no plumbing in the house until much later.
My father and his two brothers lived there until they married and moved away, not far, all the brothers live within 8 miles of the house. I am not sure when plumbing was added, I was born in the late 70’s and I don’t remember a time when there was not plumbing in the house so I am estimating the job began either in the late 70’s or early 80’s. I remember my grandfather telling me that he put in plumbing because grandma wanted a bathtub. Unfortunately, the bathtub never got completely finished, though they did have a working indoor toilet and sink and a sink in the kitchen for dishes.
My memories of that house are all good. I adored my grandparents and considered myself pretty lucky to be able to visit them every day. My grandpa used to take naps on the couch and I would crawl up in his lap and pinch his nose to wake him up, my grandmother would laugh, she was a co-conspirator, you know. Grandma would make chocolate pudding that she wasn’t supposed to eat, but did anyway. She read me the Sunday funnies every Sunday until her eyes got too bad to do it, then I read them to her. Every Christmas was spent there; glorious times with family, good food, and waiting, oh the painful waiting! Most of all though, I remember the smell of the wood fire. To this day, if I smell a wood fire, I think of my grandparents. Sometimes, it is like I can feel my grandmother’s presence with me, when we move in, it will be like bringing my grandmother home.
This summer, as we are very short on funds because of the current US economy, we will be doing things that require very little money, like doing some much-needed maintenance on the shelterbelt. It has not been touched for about two decades. We also want to begin going through some of the things in buildings that collapsed long ago. Along with taking care of the shelterbelt will be removing some dead trees from around the house, as you can see from the picture, one of those trees is on the house. If money starts coming in more than it is right now (prayer is powerful) then we will be looking for an architect to write up plans for the house, we want to make it a full two-story and add on to the back as well. I felt bad at first, feeling like I needed to add on to it, but every family that I have known to live there, added on to it in some way to fit their family.
I will post more as the work continues, but here is where it begins.
Rachel said,
February 18, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Kari–this is great! I’m so excited for you and am looking forward to following your progress on your blog.