To read the first post, It Hasn’t Always Been This Way, click here.
My family bought this old farm two years ago. Its previous owner passed away three years earlier, and from what we’ve been able to determine, the house sat mostly vacant during those years — vacant of people but not of furnishings. The adult children moved the furnishings out of the house only a few months before we bought it, and there were many things they chose to leave behind. We spent the first three months mostly throwing away trash and clearing out what the children chose not to take.
The house had that musty stopped up smell that old houses seem to share in common. Cobwebs clung to the ceilings. Some doors wouldn’t stay open. Others wouldn’t stay closed. Two shutters were missing off of the house. A third blew off in a wind storm shortly after we moved in. Bat droppings left brown streaks down the peeling white paint from the bats’ sleeping quarters behind the remaining shutters. About a dozen or so window panes were cracked. The metal roof over the front door was rusted. Both front porch roofs leaked. Rain ran behind the gutters not in them. There were gaping holes along the eaves.
The landscape was overgrown. The rhododendrons in the front of the house, joined by Virginia creeper, had grown in between the storm windows and the sashes. Remnants of flower beds were exactly that — just whispers of what once was. We did see one solo iris peek its rust brown head out of the weeds to bloom that first summer we were here.
The land had been neglected, too. We found a couple of forgotten bird houses and wooden benches in the woods left to rot and crumble away. Trash was left in piles behind the carriage house. Painful and invasive plants grew along the roadside under the row of mature larches that lead to the driveway. Horse nettle, wild parsnip, garlic mustard, and poison hemlock grew unattended in the fields and along the driveway, some reaching nearly five feet in height. Trash littered the shoulder, some fresh, some half-buried under several inches of broken asphalt and mud. A rotted deer carcass and a car fender lay under a tree.
The previous owners’ children hired someone to mow the lawn on occasion, and a local farmer cut the main meadow for hay. The rest of the land was ignored. The hill that had once been cleared pasture stood covered in scrub, saplings, and young trees just tall enough to fall on the power lines and knock out the power to the fifteen houses in our general vicinity every time the wind blows. Ancient apple trees that once produced fruit for livestock stood crowded out by Japanese honeysuckle and pines. Poisonous mushrooms grew in the dense, damp woods where light dared not reach.
Most of the trees near the house bore dead and broken branches. Three dead trees dotted the line of vision in the back, and the near-dead butternut tree I mentioned in the first post barely stood in the center of the back yard. Squirrels and ground hogs had taken over the granary and carriage house. Stores of walnuts and pine cones covered every available surface in heaping mounds.
The roof of the carriage house leaked. The walls were covered in green algae or mildew. The granary doors were sealed shut by years of dirt buildup and neglect. The stone wall in the back yard fell down both backwards in one section and forwards in another. The wooden steps at the front door of the house were rotten and splintering apart. The metal hand railing at another door had rusted at the base and was no longer attached to the steps. A wooden wheelchair ramp added for the previous owner was covered in green, slippery goo, and it, too, was rotten.
A skunk lived under the front porch. A groundhog lived under the back porch. Squirrels and bats lived in the attic. A field mouse or two lived in the basement. Ladybugs, seed bugs, and flies lived in the main house.
Everywhere we looked, we had poison-this and stinging-that, wild over here and invasive over there. We had rotten wood, wild animals, rusted pipes, dead trees, ankle-turning holes in the yard, squirrel-inviting holes in the siding, broken stones on the path, trash inside the house, trash outside the house, muddy water coming out of the pipes, a wood stove we were told by five different people not to use under any circumstances, and a furnace with a cracked heat exchanger.
Where some people might have seen disaster, I knew it hadn’t always been that way, and I knew it didn’t have to stay that way.
I saw peonies in bloom, roses delicately tumbling over a fence railing, wisteria climbing up the sides of a pergola, alliums bobbing their round heads in the wind, foxgloves tinkling, tulips standing tall, glads and hollyhocks waving to passersby. I saw plump, juicy tomatoes, ready to burst their skins, crisp apples waiting to be crunched, radishes and parsnips, peaches and plums. I could smell the basil crushed between my fingers, and the dark, rich soil waiting to be planted. I could hear the thump of a ripe pumpkin and corn stalks rustling in the wind and feel the burst of a grape at the first bite plucked from the vine and eaten right there under the summer sun.
I didn’t plant the heirloom irises or larch trees, but I will plant witch hazel and blueberries. I didn’t plant the ancient apples on the hill, but I will plant a new orchard. I don’t mow the field for hay, but I will plant hops, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, and beans.
My family love this land, and we love this old house. We made the commitment to be stewards, caretakers of this place, and that is what we will do.
So, when I see something else that is rotten, rusted, or broken or find something invasive or dangerous, I remind myself — It hasn’t always been this way, and it won’t always be this way. It’s going to be so much better.
We love music and history, so we’ve created a playlist of songs from the year our house was built. We call it 1882. To listen, visit the Mædunbroc profile on Spotify. You will be able to “like” the playlist and “follow” our profile, so you can come back to it again and again. 1882 is our first playlist. We are working on playlists for each decade of our house’s life, and we’ll add a few more as our house and farm continue to grow. Access the 1882 playlist here.
We also love food and history, so we are recreating dishes from years past starting with a dish popular in 1882 — Apple Butter Custard Pie. If you like pumpkin pie, you will love this one. We hope you will give it a try.
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