A Fireside Chat

The first kitchen fire

Our farmhouse has two fireplaces. The first, in the 'hall' portion of the house [the living room today], was built of native stone in 1843. The flue is large enough to stand up in, if you want a head full of soot. The second, in the kitchen, was rebuilt at some point, probably in the 1950's, after the original fireplace was damaged. While we believe the interior hearth and surrounding stones were reused from the original, this fireplace is otherwise modern, with firebrick and [badly] veneered stone over cinder block on the exterior. We'll get to that one day.

To be honest, the fireplaces helped sell us the house. When we would spend long hours discussing our imagined future here, roaring fires in these fireplaces and thoughts of fall and winter nights illuminated by the dancing flames were always mentioned. The kitchen fireplace, too, would have been a working one. That is, used for cooking and warming bath water in addition to providing light and heat. It was our great hope that it might function like that again.

Thankfully, the long, hot, sweaty and somewhat dangerous work of two men over two days has restored our beautiful fireplaces to working order and our once-blurry hope for their continued use has focused into a clear reality.

On Saturday, September 1, we had our first fire in the kitchen fireplace after celebrating our 10-year anniversary. It was the only light in the room. And, once again, the flickering light spilled from the windows across the yard. Just as it did in 1843. We installed a crane for cooking over the fire, too.

So y'all stop by, one cool fall night, for some fireside company and some homemade cornbread, 'hear?