Yesterday, I traveled with my daughter and three of her children to see a parcel of land (almost six acres) for sale. It was the perfect afternoon to be in the country with clear blue skies overhead and a strong breeze blowing through all the trees on the property. And there were plenty of trees: an apple orchard, a long stand of black walnut trees, mulberry, oak, maple, large hackberry trees and an assortment of beautiful evergreens. My daughter has been “homesteading” to some degree at their home in a suburb of Des Moines for quite some time. She longs for land and a place to have a very large garden, chickens and maybe even dairy goats. I come from a long line of Scottish farmers. Maybe she inherited some of that love for the land.
The farmhouse on the land was built in 1920 and has seen better days. It has no central heat or air conditioning. There is a substantial wood stove in the family room which would heat part of the house. The hope was to be able to move the house to another part of the land and build their new home where the old house stood. I think each of us had pictured decorating an old farmhouse!
The beautiful setting reminded me of traveling with my parents as a child to visit aunts and uncles living in the country. Sadly, my parents sold their farm before I was born. I would have loved growing up in the country! I remember visiting my Aunt Lillian and her family on a farm in Mississippi. I loved it! My cousins and I would pick blackberries by the train trestle. We might have returned with a few chiggers but we also returned with big, juicy blackberries! Aunt Lillian would make a delicious blackberry cobbler on the old wood stove. She would also make tender huge biscuits just like Mama’s. Perhaps they inherited their gift for cooking from my grandmother.
The wood stove always fascinated me. Even as a child, I wondered how she knew when the temperature was right for baking those delicious cakes, pies and biscuits. Somehow, it seemed like magic but, even as a child, I knew it couldn’t be that simple. I knew even then there was work involved.
I’m a little too “old” to start homesteading now but I do admire those who are investing in their future by learning from days gone by…
By the way, if you’re interested in enjoying food actually prepared on a wood burning stove, visit here to learn about a visit to the Living History Farms in Des Moines, Iowa, where you can do just that! Also, here is a good article about how the cooks of yesteryear determined the temperature of their wood stove! The wood burning stove at top was featured in Country Living.
