The Farmhouse

One of the things I love is taking the scenic way home.  Especially when Jamey is driving so I can focus all my attention on the houses out my window.  This isn't about house envy.  It's because I am utterly fascinated and intrigued by other people's homes, especially old (and even run down) farmhouses.  What did it look like in it's glory?  Did it ever experience glory or was it always a struggle for the people who lived there?  Who lived there anyway?  Were their children born upstairs and their parents buried up on the hill?  Where were their gardens?  Their woodpiles?  The tree which held their children's swing?  And, more recently...Did they ever keep bees?

Once someone's hog shed, this is now my children's play house.

And more than anything, I want Jamey to pull in the driveways and let me walk through the rooms- abandoned or not.  Most people would invite me in, right?  Well, seeing as Jamey does not let me do this while he's driving and since I would not have the courage to do it when I'm out driving around on my own, this hasn't happened.  Yet.

It's funny because years (and years) ago when I was a teenager if I had driven by an old ramshackle farmhouse, it would have given me the willies- broken out windows, sagging porch floors, chipped paint, rusted junk piles and high weeds would have sent shivers up my spine and reminded me of horror movies I now wish I had never watched.

But now, it's different.  Because now I live in an old farmhouse.  Me.  My husband, my children.  Our family comes to visit.  Cousins and friends play in the trees, dig holes and have camp fires.  There's nothing scary about a lonely farmhouse whose lane is no longer visible from lack of use.  Sitting alone in a cluster of trees among pastures, it one day held a vibrant, pulsing household.  Likely there was a woman living there who scrubbed the floors, wiped down the walls and hand sewed curtains for those windows.  There were likely children who pulled weeds, worked in the barn and fed the animals.  There were likely meals prepared from the garden, root cellar and canning jars.

complete with rock collection display

So this is why I put up with an old farmhouse- its draftiness, its creaky floors, its anything-but-level door ways, ceilings and floors, its critter issues, and its never-ending to-do lists. It's all to preserve its history, recycle its structure and add to the generations of people that called it home.

If you have it in you, I highly recommend going the old farmhouse route.  And then please invite me in when I come knocking at your door.

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