Then chance, in the shape of a poultry show, came to my relief. Instead of a cheap flat and semi-dark rooms, why not a house and garden, where we could have chickens, eggs and vegetables of our own? Friends scoffed; and even my husband, who had always joined me in planning the ideal home of our old age, as a place far from the noise and rush of the city, where we could indulge our love of flowers and animals, demurred at first, though he eventually became imbued with my enthusiasm, and told me to go ahead 4 if I felt equal to shouldering the responsibilities which city duties would obviously prevent his sharing.
He stipulated also that transportation to and from his business in the city, and all other expenses, should come within the newly necessary curtailment of expenses, which limited rent to twenty-five dollars a month and the housekeeping allowance to twelve dollars a week; that none of our very limited capital should be risked, excepting one hundred dollars to cover expense of moving, etc., and that even this sum should be considered as a loan. To satisfy the dear man’s cautious, masculine ideas of fairness, I took twenty-four hours to consider the conditions, and then, with solemn, businesslike gravity, accepted.
A painstaking advertisement in a Sunday paper, stating plainly that we wanted a small farm near the city and a railway station, the rent not to exceed fifteen dollars a month, brought dozens of letters offering all sorts of places at all sorts of distances and prices, but only six real answers. With the writers of these six letters I corresponded; studied innumerable railway guides; took several fruitless journeys; hesitated about two or three places, then just stumbled upon the right place.
It is like choosing a new hat or garment. You like that one, but this one is more becoming. You suddenly see something else quite different—hesitancy is over; the unconscious ideal is found.
The house was long and low and white, standing at the end of the road, facing a somewhat neglected, old-fashioned 5 flower garden, which verged into five acres of orchard bounded by a river. The man who was driving me didn’t know to whom the place belonged. I got out, looked in at the windows, made out that there was a wide hall through the centre and two big old-fashioned fireplaces and a lot of odd cupboards.
Outside there was a wood-shed, summer kitchen, small smoke-house, barn, cow shed, corn-crib and chicken house. My original destination was forgotten. I was driven back to the station; found out who the owner was, and where he lived; drove over there, and ascertained that the house contained four large rooms and one small one, kitchen, pantry and two cellars downstairs, and five rooms and an attic upstairs.
There are one hundred and eighty acres of land or more, but the landlord would divide it to suit good tenants, which he evidently thought we would be, for subsequently we arranged to take the house, buildings, orchard, twelve acres of farm land and four acres of woodland on a three years’ lease, at a rental of fifteen dollars a month, with the privilege of taking the remainder of the land at any time during our tenancy for an extra five dollars a month, and an option of purchase.
Really, it seemed too good to be true, for it was within the prescribed distance from the city and depot, the price of commutation being only six dollars a month. The river, the old-fashioned garden with its two great catalpa trees shading the house, and the beauty of the surrounding scenery, made it almost a 6 realization of our ideal home. Thankful joy filled our hearts even before we had experienced the glorious invigoration of an industrious outdoor life on the farm, where each day brings some new interest.
All our goods and chattels, including two cats and a canary, were packed in two vans, which took them the entire twenty-eight miles for thirty dollars. A kitchen stove cost thirty-five dollars; three wash tubs, four lamps and a few necessary tools absorbed another twenty-five dollars; and the last ten of the hundred dollars was spent in straw matting, which we divided between two bedrooms.
Of course, I had to start at the very bottom of the ladder, buying only with the money that I could save from week to week from my housekeeping allowance. A few hens, a few ducks, gradually through the poultry family, then an incubator and brooder, to the dignity of a horse and cow; after whose acquisition, the home became self-supporting, the third year showing a surplus profit.
Of course, there were difficulties and troubles to be overcome, but they were all the direct result of my own ignorance. A friend well posted in country-home making, from whom I could have acquired vicarious experience, would have prevented most of them. Hence my desire to pass on to practical lessons, learned during the last sixteen years, for the benefit of other women.
Our old-fashioned white house and shady garden 7 might not appeal to every one, but no matter what individual taste may demand in architecture and environment, there are certain points which must be observed to insure the health and happiness which we all desire. The house must be on high ground, with good subdrainage. How to be sure of the latter point puzzled me, until an old real-estate man, in answer to my praise of a place we were passing, said:
“Handsome? Yes, but it is a death trap. Dig a hole six feet deep anywhere around the house, and in twelve hours there will be water at the bottom of it.”
Needless to say, this place was not on his list, but the hint was a good one and has been remembered. Wet meadows and spring ponds may give no anxiety, but stagnant water is dangerous, for it breeds mosquitoes and malaria. Fortunately, it is generally easily abolished; an able-bodied man with a shovel can usually dig a gutter to some near-by fall in the natural grade of the land that will drain it. Mosquitoes were one of our troubles for two years; then three hours’ work banished their breeding-ground.
As it is a permanent home, and not a summer camp, which is being selected, shelter from cold winds is important. The woodland on our place protected barns, house and orchard. If there is no natural wind-break, and the place is satisfactory enough otherwise to make you contemplate buying it in future, it will be wise to plant out quick-growing trees, which usually can be bought for little or nothing in the country, and 8 transplanted when quite a good size. Inexpensive country houses do not have furnaces, and like us, you may not be able to afford one for a year or two.
We found that two large stoves, with the pipes arranged to pass through the ceiling and into radiators in the rooms above, and thence into the chimney, would heat four rooms. The pipe of the kitchen range can be utilized in the same way. Stoves with cracks and poor fire bricks waste fuel and warmth, so don’t try to economise on stoves.
We have always used an open hearth in the living-room, because it looks so cheerily comfortable, and a door at the opposite end of the room opens into the dining-room, allowing the air from there to come in, and so preventing the cold backs which are the usual drawback of a picturesque open fire.
One of the joys of depending on stoves is being able to regulate the heat in each room to meet all conditions. Our apartment in town was of the better class, yet just as surely as an extra cold snap arrived, so surely did the heating apparatus get out of order. Another horror was the “kling-kling” of the pipes in the dark, uncanny hours of the morning, when every well-regulated human being ought to be allowed to sleep in peace.
Having plenty of wood, we used what are called “air-tight chunk stoves” instead of coal, excepting in the kitchen. And truly we have never experienced any trouble in keeping the entire house hot in the bitterest weather. But we took precautions, such as keeping 9 the putty around the window panes in good order. We used sandbags on the ledges, mats at the doors, and red building paper (which has no odor) or several thicknesses of newspaper under the floor covering. Then we opened most of the windows for a few minutes every morning, and let in fresh air.
People rave about the pleasures of the country in summer, but I think city folks more thoroughly realise the joys of a country home in winter. We found something delightfully restful about the crackling log fire on the open hearth, around which the whole family could gather. There is a “hominess” about it that can’t be found by the side of a steam radiator. And could any specialist prescribe a better panacea for a business man’s overwrought nerves? There, I am letting my enthusiasm for country pleasure interfere with the practical help I set out to give. And even now the joys of skating, sleighing and tobogganing have not been cited.
Making the home comfortable in hot weather is a very simple matter. A house has four sides—one for each point of the compass—so open windows and doors, and catch whatever breeze there is. Wire screens are cheap; besides, care in not allowing garbage and water to stand around the premises will mitigate flies and mosquitoes.
If fate or your fancy has settled you in a new place minus old trees to shade the lawn and porch, wire netting and wild cucumber vines, which grow very rapidly, will furnish a substitute. For keeping provisions 10 I found a well-ventilated cellar better than the best refrigerator. We take out the windows and replace them with two thicknesses of flannel, which are thoroughly saturated with water. At noon time on a hot day evaporation lowers the temperature several degrees, yet the current of fresh air is not obstructed, as it would be with closed windows.
Well or spring water is usually refreshingly cool, so an ice house is really not imperative, though I recommend building a small one if the farm provides good ice, for it is an inexpensive building to construct, rough boards, sawdust and the ordinary handy man’s labor being the only requirements. We did not have one for several years, but then we had a spring-house with a stone floor and shelves, and a wide gutter running all around, through which the water from the spring was conducted, keeping the place almost icy.
Modern improvements are never to be found in inexpensive country houses, so we found that a bathroom or some means of taking an all-over scrub would have to be constructed immediately. We bought a full-sized tin bath tub with a wooden bottom for about seven dollars, and placed it in the little room off the kitchen. A piece of rubber hose was bound tightly to the escape pipe of the bath tub, and carried through the wall out into a box drain, thence to a barrel ten feet from the house, which had no bottom, and was sunk into the ground. From there, of course, the water seeped into the subsoil and disappeared.
We thought it was very fine indeed at first, but later, 11 when our ideas and finances broadened, we replaced it with a porcelain enameled tub and wash bowl, with properly soldered waste pipes into a tile-drain sink three feet deep, to prevent freezing.
A pump over the kitchen sink had been the only water supply, but as that was drawn from a splendid spring several feet above the level of the house, we determined, when investing in a new bathroom outfit, to stretch the purse strings a little further, and put in hot and cold water. A waterback was attached to the kitchen stove, and a sixty-three-gallon boiler attached. It cost twenty-two dollars and seventy-five cents. The bath and basin cost thirty-eight dollars. Fifty feet of one-and-one-half-inch pipe, seven dollars and fifty cents. One hundred feet of half-inch pipe, six dollars. Waste pipe, two dollars. Labor, twenty-two dollars.
When a spring is not conveniently situated, an automatic ram and a cistern will have to be used, and I am told that they would cost about seventy dollars more. Even with the new arrangement of the bathroom, we retain the earth closet, which had been bought some time before, at a cost of twenty-five dollars. It stands with its back to the outer wall, through which a trap-door was cut, to permit the removal and replacing of pans and earth. This is undoubtedly the most inexpensive and sanitary contrivance with which a country house can be furnished.
The next comfort was a telephone, which cost only eighteen dollars a year, including local calls, long-distance 12 calls, of course, being extra charges. That, with the rural delivery and daily paper, brings us stay-at-homes in touch with the great doings of the world and the little interests of our friends.
We deserted the city in March, but experience has taught me that the fall is the best time of the year in which to migrate. There are not so many people looking for country places; the days are bright and cool, the roads in good condition, and there is much that can be done in the garden and orchard to facilitate next spring’s work. By starting poultry in the fall, one can have broilers ready to catch the early spring prices. Moreover, it is the early chick that will make a good layer the following winter.
In the following chapter we will carry the housekeeping into the poultry yard, for that is the best starting point for a self-supporting home.