Lucky dog[s]!

Farm dogs like:

Grass grazing
Stick eating
Frog sniffing
Bird chasing
House wrestling
Dirt snuffling
Chicken following
Hair shedding
Ball catching
Bed napping
Alarm barking
Rabbit pursuing
Caretaker ignoring
Fence patrolling
Grounds exploring
Treat snacking
Guest licking
Rope tugging
Rain absorbing
Country loving
Fireside gazing
Food begging
Sun bathing
Supper inhaling
Nighttime snuggling

A Mighty Small Nest for an Awful Lot of Birds!

Think your house is too small? We have little idea how families used to live.

The house we left behind was under 1,000 square feet. The closets were nearly impossible. Originally a one bathroom with two bedrooms [three if you counted the make-shift, converted-closet that 3 or 4 boys shared], we wondered how on earth a family of nine managed to live in our Decatur bungalow.

True, we have a bit more elbow room out here in the country. The rooms are large. And our new closet? Heaven! But it wasn't always to spacious.

Our little farmhouse [a cabin, really] housed several generations of the Housworth family. But families were, for many, far different than our modern-day experience of what a nuclear family is today. Aunts, uncles, in-laws, nieces or nephews moved around according to who might have room or food or any other resource that afforded some measure of comfort.

The second generation of Housworths that occupied our home consisted of Ed, son of John Milton and Lou Housworth, and his wife, Lula, who lived here with their seven children. Ed's older sister, Alma, lived here for most of her life. Maude, a niece, also lived here as did Barbara, a relative or friend [I'm unsure which... time to call our Housworths-on-retainer, Marvin and Alton. for some clarification]. There were others, too. Family members were passed around like borrowed lawn mowers.

So our 1,200 square foot farmhouse sheltered eleven people for most of it's middle history. Keep in mind, there was no indoor bath or water until 1988. People slept everywhere! The living room housed two beds. Our bedroom would have slept three or more. The guestroom was home to four boys. And Ed and Lula shared a bed in what is now our bathroom. No doubt they slept well when they could! The other room was the kitchen. It would have acted as the only real "family room" and I wish we could walk in to find them all squeezed in there around a farm table near the wood-burning stove, laughing and sharing stories. The back porch, now enclosed and acting as our pantry and "dog room", held buckets of spring water where all would bathe. Imagine!

And no closets. None.

So we wouldn't complain about space now, even if we needed to. The house would have seemed empty to them. And while we appreciate the space, the peace and quiet that it affords us in embarrassing luxury, what I wouldn't give to share that table until we were tired of stories and retired to our own corner of a crowded room, no doubt laughing and giggling and talking long after we should have fallen asleep in the dark country evening. Each room full-to-bursting with family. And a love and familial intimacy that few of us will know and even fewer would want to know because we have come to expect and appreciate and need our space.

I wouldn't trade it for the biggest house in Atlanta.

Finely-feathered now but a bedroom in the past!

Rearranging Things

Armed with some historical information and a bucket of romantic ideas, I thought I had the fabric of this old place all figured out. The documentation said Abraham Housworth built our house in 1843. And, apparently, that's true enough. But using my imaginary moving wagon to arrange their furniture for them, well, that's jumping the gun. We'll never know if he and his family even lived here.

And, sure, his brother Michael bought it from him in 1852. But Michael and his family lived up the road. Did a hired hand live here? A few of his father's slaves? Again, a mystery. So deciding for him which room the kids slept in? A little presumptuous on my part.

I suppose that in-filling these historical facts with my own stuffing hasn't hurt a thing. It hardly matters now to anyone but us and a handful of Housworth families members who might like to keep things straight. Sometimes the cold, hard truths can be even better than my sandcastles, though. Or at least more interesting.

We've been so lucky to have the best encyclopedias about our house that anyone could hope to have. The Housworths have been so kind and generous with ancestry information, family photos, and, unbelievably, recordings of family members recollecting their own lives in the house and in the area. Really fascinating stuff. It's like opening a trunk in the attic and finding a glowing stash of golden coins.

Listening to these people, with their own voices, telling us how it really was [or at least how they remembered it to be] has shaken the little snowglobe I had filled so carefully.

This was a happy home, excepting all of that death and destruction during the War. Overlooking the losses of babies and spouses. Forgetting about hard economic times and failed crops. I mean fundamentally this was a happy family. A family that held itself together through love and necessity through all of those messy things I just glossed over. And I suppose that's what a neatly summed-up history is -  a neat, shiny coat of gloss that hides the real depth beneath it.

The fact that the house was never painted had less to do with my own story, that they had steadfastly refused to change the character of the place, and more to do, probably, with the fact that this was a hard-scrabble life and there was no money to fancy the place up. Things stayed the same because they had to. Seven children and no running water? That's not a choice anyone makes. That's a choice that's been thrust upon you.

It's not to say that they didn't grow up around inconveniences and hard times, like a tree grows up around a stone. They did. And probably enjoyed it a great deal of the time. It's that you really can't make things up because that's how you wanted things to be.

So armed now with a lot more information, I'll try to find some room for a few more of these awesome family pictures. And, while I'm at it, I'll rearrange a few of my preconceived notions.

2013 Bricks...to be continued

The adventure of restoring a 170-year old home is full of challenges, frustrations, surprises and humbling presentations.

There are crooked walls, floors, ceilings and leaning windows that now slant into the wind. There are drafts where the wind will challenge a burning candle, and the source of the draft lies hidden in the wall, floors and ceilings that will never reveal their secrets. Upon close inspection during the cleaning of board by board, one finds a scratch, a carving that spells the name of a little girl that lived in the house over a hundred years ago and a rusted tin flap in the kitchen floor that provided a point of entry and exit for the house cat that kept mice, or worse, out of the precious grains that helped the family live through a cold winter during the Civil War...you close your eyes for a moment to think of that time and wish you had a looking glass into that world, if only for a moment...and realize you live in the looking glass.

The challenges are often in the obvious, a leaking roof, the rotted floor, or the infrastructure things that never had to worry about 'meeting code' decades and decades ago. The frustrations surface when you pull away an floor plank from 1843 or a heart pine board from 1870, only to find dry rot or skeletons of animals that found their final resting place in a warm wall behind the wood burning stove, Better yet, you realize that floors 170 years ago never needed to worry about the weight of a refrigerator, gas range, dishwasher, or refurbished cast iron tub with beautiful claw feet...forget about a washer and dryer. So you must strategically reinforce the floor to support the things that will carefully be integrated (or hidden) into this perfect place that you now call your home.

What you learn through this process is that each setback, each challenge becomes a new layer in the foundation you are building for the future, your future and the future of the home that will also outlive this generation. You know you need to work through the challenges and, just when you get discouraged, you realize that you have just laid another brick in that foundation. The stress makes way for a sense of accomplishment or a feeling that you are one step closer to breathing new life into a wonderful piece of history...a history in which you are now part of the story. That's why we do this; that's why we keep solving the next problem and trying to laugh as we work through the next restoration surprise. The other Ploughman and I now refer to these 'speed bumps' as 'bricks.' We've recently completed the installation of a shake roof like the one that would have graced the house in 1843; it's a fine hat. And the new restoration windows with 9 over 9 lights have been installed to mimic the one remaining window of the original 1843 construction. Through the windows the golden light shines outward to the pasture at dusk, but it looks much like brand new pair of 19th century spectacles through which the house sees the world around it.

As we fix or solve another surprise, we realize we are one step (brick) closer to bringing the 'old girl' back to her glory. It's really an adventure and a love story...one that we stumbled upon on an unintentional drive through the country. Remember: a curving gravel driveway can be a seductive thing...for sure. 

Ploughman 2

A Little Red Flag on the Fourth

We agreed that it seemed like a good day to put up a new mailbox. The Fourth of July. A country road. A new place we would build together. It's about the farthest thing from a new independence... acres to look after, a ramshackle house to put back together, animals to be tended. But that's what it felt like. A fresh start. And while we are five miles from a shopping mall [what isn't anywhere near Atlanta?], we felt as though we had thrown everything into our wagon and were setting out to a new frontier.

So, although it wouldn't actually be ours for several more weeks, we put in our new mailbox. It may not seem like much to most, but it made us feel, well, planted.

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?

The Rest Will Follow

It's not a farm, really, without a fence. There must have been a few here but nearly all evidence is gone now. We still have a rusty, leaning, wire fence that cuts through the pasture but it's not too old. It once supported a grapevine but it was relieved of that job when the privet and hickories and a hundred other volunteers grew large enough to provide a higher, wider perch for it.

We liked how the pasture rolled lazily from the road up to the house and paused, perilously close to slipping down the wooded slope in back. It was so open. But the dogs live here, too, and they are notorious for making bad decisions when squirrels or cats are involved. And then there are our imaginary sheep and donkeys and goats. They will be real enough next year and they'll need all the protection we can offer.

Norman Vincent Peale once said "Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow."

Well, now the dogs have room to roam. Safely. And while the livestock aren't quite secure yet, they aren't actually real yet anyway. So there's time for that. The pasture stops now, just north of the house but there is still a little eddy of it off to the side so it's never too far away. There's a bell to ring by the new farm gate, too, so we'll know when you come by to visit.

So now we have a fence. And we've already thrown our hearts over it. The rest, then, will certainly follow.