A while back, a cousin of mine gave me a picture that some may question the subject matter in the picture. It is of a few head of cattle walking into and around an abandoned house, in the middle of a pasture. I proudly have it hanging on a wall in our house as it portrays a scene I had told my cousin about years ago. She remembered and gave me a treasured gift.
When my late farmer husband and I moved back to our hometown area, he longed to get back into farming as he had grown up with it and loved it. Even though he had studied and worked for a time as a draftsman, he wasn’t content doing that. So we moved back to where we both had grown up. He took a full time job in a neighboring town, dreaming of purchasing our own farm. A house in our hometown came up for sale. It was the dream house I had longed to have, with two open staircases, a large living room, a den, kitchen, three bedrooms, sun room and a bathroom. It was a well known Post Victorian house. After discussing it, my husband and I started making plans to purchase it. Then those plans came to a screeching halt when it was learned a farm could be purchased. The owner was willing to let us purchase it on time. Somehow I knew my dream house had to go back in my dreams.
My husband assured me there was a farmhouse on this farm but it hadn’t been lived in for a “few” years. If it didn’t suit, we could work out purchasing a double wide trailer or something. He had taken our fathers to look the farm over. They thought the house could be repaired and remodeled. With hope in my heart, he took me out to view the house. I was not prepared for what I saw. The roof was in bad shape, the doors to the house were wide open and it was obvious cattle had managed to walk into the abandoned house. In one back room, the door was closed. When it was opened, I viewed a couple of piles of grain that had been stored inside the room. The bathroom had a shower with a concrete floor and an electrical plug on one of the walls of the shower. There was an old sink, and no washer or dryer hook ups. The kitchen probably dated to the late 40s or early 50s. How could we bring our two sons into this house to live? The look on my face was quickly noted by my husband and he lost his smile. He said, “But your dad thought it would take some work but the floors are in good shape and the walls are strong”....I was silent.
All the way back to town, we were silent. After later discussing it and knowing the farm was his longing dream, and our fathers’ were committed to helping with the work on the house, I agreed to make it all work out. Soon our fathers, neighbors, friends and relatives were helping. Within a few months, it was livable, made safe and remodeled completely. Walls were knocked out, a new bathroom was developed, new plumbing and new electrical work was done, new appliances and kitchen cupboards were put into place. Later, an addition was added to the house with help from our pastor. It had been turned into a great country farm home. We backed out of the purchase of the lovely house in town and zeroed in on making this our comfortable home.
The view from the front yard of that house was breathtaking as it showed the Burr Oak Creek valley, the trees surrounding the creek that flowed near by, and the house was on a hill overlooking our hometown. The neighbors around us were wonderful. We made that our home for 20 years. After that, we moved back into our hometown and we purchased that dream house that had slipped through my fingers years earlier.
Now as I look at the picture of the cattle in the abandoned farm house, it brings back a lot of memories and smiles. What I once thought was impossible to be made into a home, somehow got done.
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