Renovating the farmhouse
Posted 8/28/02

All of the Swansons had a hand in upgrading the desolate farmhouse they moved into the spring of 1913. Grandma quickly made the downstairs rooms cozy by hanging curtains and pictures, and putting lace cloths on tables. Her Boston fern probably traveled with her wherever she lived. I cannot recall being in a home back then that did not have a fern plant standing on a pedestal in the living room, dining room or porch. They were hardy plants that grew well indoors.

My grandfather built himself a good-sized shop, invaluable while adding new buildings and renovating others. It was a place for tools, nails, lumber, scraps of metal and leather. Most anything could be found there. He had a grinder for sharpening tools (likely most farms had one) and he set up a smithy for repairing and replacing farm equipment that wore out, such as wagon tongues and hinges, and for hammering metal into new parts. Grandpa enjoyed working on these things in the wintertime and so did Charlie.

Part of the shop was made into a private room for Swen, Grandpaís father, where he preferred to stay in the warmer seasons. When Grandpa wasnít pounding away at something in the shop, it was a quiet spot for Swen. Though he enjoyed the children, here he was distanced from their usual chatter and the activity in the busy kitchen.

There was much to do on the house. The basic frame of the building consisted of squared logs placed a couple feet into the upper story. Planed wood boards extended from the logs to the roof. Insulation did not exist back then. Laths - thin strips of wood about an inch and a half wide - were nailed at angles, criss-crossing with half-inch spaces onto the outside walls to form a base for plaster.

Plastering was a tedious and messy job. When the plaster dried, it was painted or wallpapered. Sometimes several layers of newspapers were tacked to the outside wall between the outside boards and the laths to provide some insulation. And sometimes newspaper was crumpled between the laths to make insulation. This was not a common practice as it may have been a fire hazard.

The most urgent project with the house was to provide sleeping space for everyone. There was a bedroom downstairs and room for a cot in the dining room. The upstairs was divided into two rooms. The larger of the two, the room to the south, was for the girls. Though it was warm sleeping upstairs in the summertime, a window at the south wall and another on the north wall gave the upstairs a cross-breeze. I recall lying in the girlsí bedroom listening to the wind whistle through the screen. It took just the right combination of window opening and south wind to play a symphony of unforgettable summer music.

In winter however, the house - especially the upstairs - was cold. Grandma raised geese for eating and for goose down to make quilts. Such luxurious warmth down quilts provided in those poorly insulated houses on freezing winter nights.

The Swansons dug a basement at the north side of the house and built a kitchen over the basement. To the west in the kitchen was an alcove with a box for storing wood to feed the cast iron cooking stove. Also, there was a shelf with a pail for drinking water and a place for washing hands. The main entrance hallway was to the east and there was another exit at the west of the house.

My favorite room when I visited at the farm as a youngster in the late 1920s and early 1930s was the porch my grandfather added in 1918 that ran the length of the main part of the house on the eastern side of the building. Rocks picked from the fields were used for the foundation. The rocks extended upward about three feet to form the lower portion of the porch. Windows ran along all three sides of the room, providing morning light and sunshine. Couches were placed at either end of the porch where Grandpa and Charlie napped after the noon meal (called dinner back then) before returning to their work. It was also a place where we children played and where we slept at night when the weather was warm.

The photograph showing the house with its new look is a fairy tale compared to the sad and lonely building pictured when the farm was purchased. My grandparents farm was a favored place of my siblings, my cousins and myself when we were youngstersóthe house, the barn, walking and playing in the pasture and along the creek, finding our way through the cornfield, and eating delicious meals at the large family table in the kitchen.

An important building not previously mentioned was the summer house sitting a short distance west of the main house. This small, one-room building was an extension of the kitchen. As its name implies, the house was used in summer, especially on hot days when heating the kitchen stove for cooking would cause unbearable warmth. There was a wood-fire cooking stove in the summer house where pots of water were heated for boiling potatoes and sweet corn, where chicken was fried, and an oven where sour cream cookies, cakes and pies were baked. This house was also used for laundering clothes in non-winter weather. In the Swanson History, Alys writes of also having a summer house on the farm at St. Croix Falls.

Eventually, my grandfather no longer worked in the quarries, but stayed home doing farm chores with the family - planting, loading hay into the hay barn, harvesting, caring for the animals. Being the farmer he didnít want to be.