Maybe, we have been here for nine generations (since 1746) and are still still farming, still cutting wood, still serving the military, still go to church and are still free. The amazing thing is, those are morals and standards the vast majority of this forum cherish too.
BTW; That originally pine tree can be seen here in our home after it was milled out and used as 10 inch wide, shiplapped wide pine flooring. I have yet to sand it down, but its pretty neat I think to have a 80 year old tree sprout from a seed, grow, be felled, milled into lumber and be laid down as flooring all within a 1/4 mile of where it was grown. (The spruce beams I hewed out by hand with an ax to get the proper hand hewn look as well. They too grew here on the farm. In fact everything I can get from the farm, I try to use, from the slate that is here used as flooring in the foyer, to the gravel in the concrete from our gravel pit.)
LodgedTree Love the old phone on the post. Brings back memories of the old wood box phones hanging on the kitchen walls of farm houses. Mostly party lines back then. Is that still working for you?
Yes it still works, but is not connected to anything. When we were kids we had these old phones hooked up; one at my parents house, then a wire going up to my grandparents house and then further up to my Uncle's house. We used to play around as kids and make calls and it definitely worked. But my parents needed 6 volt dry cell batteries and after awhile they were hard to find so the fun ended. My parents burned in a fire in 2002 and I don't know what happened to my Uncle's, but this phone belonged to my late-Grandmother and was in her house. We own that house too, and when we bought the farm off my father, the house and furnishings went with it. You see them about the room, and so we mounted the phone to the wall. One thing you will note in this photo is a old hand pump for our coffee area. It took a lot of brazing, plumbing and creativity, but it actually works. Just turn some old shower handles and water pours out of the spout for filling up the coffee decanter. The huge galvanized sink is great for scrubbing eggs, potatoes, or veggies before canning. Our kitchen has a lot of surprising features that are not readily seen, such as the mini-fridge just under the multi-colored bottles. That holds keeps our coffee creameries chilled. And just beside it is the trash, that is why we call it our "coffee center; you can stand in one spot and throw away the old filter and grounds, grab new coffee from above the microwave, fill the decanter from the sink, and have chilled creamer...all without taking a step.
Here is our small island. If you look hard you will see cut outs in the white trim for the controller, that is because under the pull up counter top is a deep freeze. No going out to the mudroom to get frozen vegetables for Katie, its immediately handy! You might also note how the counter top isfolded down, that is because it flips up in bridge like fashion and is secured to the second, larger island. Katie came from out-of-state so when her family comes to visit, there are many of them and we often eat buffet style. This flip up counter top allows for a really big bufet area to set out food, but for everyday use, it flips down so Katie does not have to walk way out of the way to get to the dining room. It really works well. But I will say this, Katie had to wait for her big kitchen (24 x 24 ft). It took us 5 years of reconstructing rooms, laying down radiant floor heat and 3 tempary kitchens until she got the kitchen she wanted, but in the meantime we kept adjusting the layout until it was just as we liked.
I cannot let my wife see pics of your kitchen, not now, not ever. I will hear " That's exactly what I want" forever. She's always talking about some kind of island in the kitchen. I pretend not hear.
If we could do things differently we would have made the small island, the one with the freezer in it, a bit bigger as the stool is used a lot. Unfortunately it only accommodates a single person. We had enough room to make it a 3 person but didn't. We would have changed that, but I am bit leery of ripping and tearing just for a slight modification. It still works fairly well. As for the big island, Katie just said, "you know I think we could double the size and still get around it", and that is why it is so big. But in our family of 6, that island is the houses hub!
