Our Second Farmhouse - Previous Owners

Our 2nd farmhouse had been in the same family since the land was first bought from the crown.  The farmhouse was well over 100 years old and had been the replacement house for the original house and that first house would have been old before it was torn down.  The previous owner, F. M., had bought the whole place from his uncles when he was young.  He had to walk 44 miles (70 kilometers) to register it so that squatters could not take over.  I don't quite understand why his uncles didn't have to do this but it must have something to do with the Homestead Act and possibly the resale of the farm, not sure.  That must have been quite the walk with not much along the way except for bush, a few farms and maybe 1 very small town. 

When he was in his 60's, he wanted to retire but none of his 4 kids wanted the farm - typical story, unfortunately.  They had all 'fled' to the city as soon as they could.  One was a lawyer, one a doctor and one was allergic to everything so there was no way any were coming back.  The youngest daughter, C., had left for Vancouver years before and had wanted nothing to do with farms.  F.M. and his wife went to visit C. and mentioned that they were going to sell the farm.  Suddenly C. says, "Mom and Dad, I'm coming home to run the farm."  They were thrilled, she did just that for 20 years and was successful but my first thought would have been more like "After all the years of hating the farm, staying as far away from it as you can get - literally the other side of the country - are you sure you're really committed to it?" 

During her 20 years there, she married a local 'big' farmer, had 3 kids, ran a successful laying hen farm for 5,000 birds, divorced same said farmer, sold the farm to the first non-family member to ever own the place and used her share of the money to open a sewing store in town, again successfully and it's still going strong.

The new owner whom I'll call T.G. moved in with his wife and his brother moved in upstairs.   They were welcomed by the neighbours who thought that this couple had every intention of living there forever but instead they just wanted the timber.  They earned over $100,000.00 worth of wood in 1 year.  I don't quite understand this either, but according to the law, if you officially own the property and live in the house for 365 days, you pay way less taxes as it's your own wood that you're selling.  The neighbours knew nothing about this and when they finally figured it out, they were furious.  As one local put it, "T.G. raped the bush", which essentially, I guess he did.  7 years later, when we had someone in to assess the bush, he found 1 tree ready and 1 tree almost ready.  The rest of the entire bush was at least 5 years or more away.   He definitely was within his rights to sell his own wood and all of it too but people were bothered by the sneakiness and underhandessness of it all.  T.G. also did not bother to cut up the tops for firewood (not enough money, too much work?) and instead, just left it all to rot.  He didn't really clearcut but didn't mind running over any and all smaller trees to get to the tree he wanted.  He left paths through the bush 2 bulldozer-widths wide and didn't care about tearing up good farm fields with his 'dozer.  He also left dozens of piles of brush at least 20' high all over the fields.  As part of the deal, he was supposed to have those gone, completely gone, not piled all over the place.  At the urging of his lawyer, he did finally push all the piles off the fields and to the edge of the bush/fields, thereby tearing up more of the fields with his bulldozer.

http://www.orangutanprotection.com/

 http://www.thehumanfootprint.wordpress.com/

We purchased the farm from T.G. as of April 15 but agreed that he could stay there rent-free until June 1 if need be.  We had no idea that he had kept his other house the whole time and did not need the extra time to buy himself another place to live as he had led us to believe.  We knocked on the door one day to ask them something but got no answer so we decided to peek in the windows (I know!  You're not supposed to do that but we figured that since we did officially own it...) to try to get a better picture of the layout and where to put the furniture.  With all of the additions, we just could not remember.  Hubby heard a hum through the open window and instantly became furious as he was pretty sure that it was the furnace running.  It was May, over 90 degrees F. and it became obvious when we entered the house that no one was living there - there was definitely no reason for any more heat.  The problem with this was that they had agreed in the deal to leave the oil tank full.  This is now mandatory but at that time, it had to be in the agreement.  It was obvious at this point that they had moved out and were trying to empty the oil tank.  Thank goodness we found out when the oil tank was still half full and thank goodness the wife was actually nothing like him.  She gave us a cheque for the right amount and it actually did not bounce.

The worst he did though, was to his wife.  He went out, got himself a girlfriend and invited her to move in with him - with his wife still in the house and at first not knowing anything about it.  The worst of  all was that the wife also had cancer.  It was only a short time later that I heard that she had died.   I guess her jerk of a hubby was just making sure that he had another woman waiting in the wings.  About a year later, he was dead, too.  I guess what goes around comes around!

Because of this guy, the neighbours became sour on new neighbours and this was the atmosphere that we moved into.  We were nothing like him though, and we were there for 11 years.

One good thing that came from clearing out the bush was - blackberries.  I didn't know anything about blackberries but one day shortly after we moved in, there was a knock on the door from an older local farmer asking if he and his friend could go back in the bush and pick the blackberries.  He explained that after a lot of trees have been cut down, blackberries will show up for a few years.  He made enough Blackberry wine each year for the next 3 years to last his family for the year and always brought us a bottle.  I knew that blueberries could grow in an area that had been affected by forest fire but I didn't know about blackberries.  The things you learn!

http://www.alchemybaking.blogspot.com/
 

More of Our Second Farmhouse

This house was a brute to heat.  The original part of the house was a square, 2-story log house that was covered on the outside with white siding and on the inside with the icky, old lathe. 

http://www.builderbill-diy-help.com/
One day, just after moving in, my one-year-old son reached through his crib, pulled off some flowered wallpaper (it had been a teen-aged girl's room!) and exposed the ever-lovely lath.  Behind the lath were the 12" X 12" logs that were kept about 4-5" apart by stones and mudding (mortar, chinking).  This mudding was long gone, presumably eaten by the large numbers of mice that we were constantly contending with.  Through the empty space blew the whole great outdoors, in spite of the siding.  Much to hubby's dismay, it became obvious that we had to start the renovating a lot sooner than hoped for, as this room was certainly not the worst one.

When we were first looking at the farm, we could see that the buildings were not in great shape but we were not too worried.  We were young(er), figured we could handle it and besides, with 5 young kids, ages 1 year  to 8 years old and our other farm now sold, we needed a place, like, yesterday.  We couldn't really afford any more time to look around.  I was just happy that there was an upstairs bathroom!  Yeah, excited!  I can't help but laugh when I watch all the renovating and relocating shows and everyone wants their own bathroom.  "Yes, I like this house but where's the 4th or 5th bathroom?  We'll just have to keep looking."  Sigh!!  I'm not laughing at the people.  Hey, I'd like my own washroom, too!  I'm laughing at the idea of any of these people having to live in any of our old houses.  You could easily run a series of "Survivor" in any old, not-fixed-up farmhouse and see how many contestants are still standing at the end of a week, let alone 11 years.

Well, the upstairs bathroom was there but was not a joy to use.  The bathroom was over the back stairs and a wooden box had been built over the headway space in the bathroom.  This space could have been better utilized as shelves but instead could not be used as anything except a seat.  Have a seat while someone else finishes using the toilet, perhaps?  I was excited to move in anyway and had one day only to clean without the kids so I went at the old cast-iron tub to clean it and immediately destroyed the cloth.  The finish on the tub was long gone, very rusty and impossible to clean.

http://www.valdosta.ebay/
This tub looks almost as bad as our tub except this one's for sale for $60.00.  If only we'd had internet back then - we might have known how rich we were.  Had no idea that we could possibly sell that old thing and maybe some other things, as well -  starting with the old sink as it was in the same condition.

There was a hole in the floor in front of the toilet that I was kind of afraid of.  The toilet was built up at least 2 inches and this worried me, too.  Some toilets are built up higher in order to help the elderly and handicapped and I chose to believe that this was the reason every time one of us had to use it.  But the holey floor in front...  It turns out that raising the toilet was actually an attempt to keep the toilet on the second floor!

http://www.accessibleconstruction.com/

The stink pipe was in the corner behind the toilet, completely exposed.  A bath towel had been neatly folded and stuffed in between the pipe and the wall.  We couldn't imagine what it could be holding up or keeping in but it was a strange thing for someone to do without a reason.  It was a strange enough thing to do WITH a reason!  We were quite sure that if we pulled it out, the stink pipe would fall down, fall through, fall over, fall somewhere so we left it alone until it was time to reno.  Later during renos, we learned that the stink pipe was fine and it's still in use today.  I guess they ran out of storage room for their towels?!  Because of all of these things, plus the fact that there was no insulation, we were convinced that this room needed to be done at the same time as our son's room - both way before we were ready to tackle them.

Sidenote*
This is the stink pipe in our 3rd farmhouse.  The photo was taken a few minutes ago and the reno was started right after New Year's, 2012.  I know, more renos, more lath, more dust.  Sigh!  But that's another story for another day! 

1940 Applalachian Pioneer's Mountain Life And Their Children

I've watched this video quite a number of times and do not get tired of it.  I can't believe that we are lucky enough to have real footage like this to view, review, get ideas from, etc.

I believe I recognize that floor at 1:43.  It looks exactly like the old floor in the back kitchen of our first farmhouse and I used to sweep the dirt down through the floorboards, just like at 1:51.

I've never seen a steel barrel used inside the house for heat, only outside for burning garbage.  The insurance companies would have a fit nowadays if they saw a steel barrel used for heat.  They don't even want them used outside.  Farmers have used them for decades to burn their garbage.  After watching quite a few episodes of the show "Trashopolis", I've come to the conclusion that governments all over the world have no single, simple idea on how to dispose of garbage properly and cleanly and therefore, the farmers have likely been doing a better job.  At any rate, the price of a new wood stove would have been out of the reach of the average 1940 family if they also had to buy a wood kitchen cookstove.  I've seen lots of ideas on Youtube for outdoor cooking from small metal coffee cans to larger barrels.  As my mom used to say, everything old is new again!