My "Other" White Farmhouse

My love of white farmhouses isn't a new thing. In fact, I've been crushing on white farm houses for as long as I remember.

It may just be because I grew up living in the original "Pray" house on the "Pray Road".  A white farmhouse filled with memories.  In the barn we had cows, a horse, pigs, sheep, chickens, my 4-H rabbits, barn cats, golden retrievers and beagles. We had tractors, wagons, a rake baler, manure spreader and other various 'hitches' (as Adrian calls them). We had a garden with rhubarb, corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, onions, peppers, beets (yuck), zucchini, different squashes and different pumpkins.  We had a clothes line, a tractor tire sandbox, a swingset and a burning barrel. We had fences to climb, fields to roam, woods to explore and a pond to fish in/ice skate on. The house had a kitchen/dining room that was attached. My mom would talk on the rotary phone with a cord that stretched across the kitchen. My brother and I would sit on the heater. My mom would roll the dishwasher on wheels over to the sink after dinner to use it. My mom (a kindergarten teacher) had a huge shelf of books and she'd read to us by the hour in the living room or we'd crank the records and dance away. Or I'd mass produce friendship bracelets. We did have a wooden TV with a dial to turn by hand that had an antenna.  We sometimes got CBS and PBS, although it was sometimes fuzzy (it went in and out with the electric fence). French stations came in clearly (living so close to Canada).  We hardly turned that thing on, as we spent our time outside. 

At age 12, when my mom was sick, we moved to an accessible house that my dad built for her. A log cabin set back off a dirt road with lots of acreage. I had the very large loft to myself-a large bedroom, another large room that became my sewing room, a library and my own bathroom.  Every teenager's dream, right? Not me. I longed for the farmhouse.  I remember a month or two after my mom passed away when I was age 15, I asked my dad if we could move back to the farmhouse, given we didn't need an accessible house any longer.  I had oodles of space in the new house, but that small bedroom in that small white farmhouse was what I so wanted to return to. 

We didn't move back. However, my dad has kept it and rented it all these years. My dad just retired last year and has decided his retirement project is to fix up that old farmhouse. He did many improvements when I was a kid, but never was able to finish.  He has time now.

My husband has never really explored the property because in the 11 years that I've known my husband, it's always been rented.  He wanted to see for himself the place I have told him all about. 

It's only a walk in the field from the farmhouse to the cabin. Or about a mile walk on the quiet roads.  It made me so happy to be able to share the walk, the homestead and the memories with my little family.  Won't you come along?



















2 comments:

  1. What a wonderful place....such peace & serenity! I love white farmhouses too...they make my heart sing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's like my dream farm house. What a lovely memory. So glad your dad has time to work on it now. New memories for your kids.

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