Jonathan Rhode and Dorothy

There is a notation from Aunt Kate that they improved the farm, but I don't know if they built the house, or just remodeled. I do remember that in the thirties, there was a very old barn that was no longer used that stood in the farm lot. We used to play in it, and I remember an old buggy that was stored there. I think the barn finally blew down in a wind storm. There was a horse tank on this side of the barn lot fence. It was connected to the windmill on a stone platform close to the house. When the wind blew and turned the windmill, water ran into the horse tank. A new red barn had been built further out through a gate in the lot beyond where the old barn stood. The farm house was a modest frame building with two bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. My grandparents slept in a small bedroom just off the main kitchen where the range kept them warm in the winter. There was a big porch that led to the summer kitchen beyond the regular kitchen. In one corner of the porch, there was a small hand pump connected to a rain water cistern. The summer kitchen had bare studded walls which were white-washed annually. There were front and back doors and two windows that had been roughed in. To the left of the front doorway, there was a huge floor-to-ceiling, blue cupboard that contained kitchen utensils, some that dated from the time of Dorothy Gray. There was a big table and chairs and a milk separator in the corner There was another range and the pie safe which we still have. Grandmother told us that an itinerant carpenter had made it from wood from some old fruit trees in the orchard. A rat had chewed a big hole in the drawer. This drawer-front was replaced and new handles were put on.

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