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My Early Life - Page 2
by Bess King

Our next home we called the Carsner Place:

The Carsner Place was a lovely place for children to grow up. Behind the house was a hill surmounted by a rim rock on which we were free to roam. The house was in a large fenced area with a semicircle of huge trees in front and to one side - a lovely shady place. Under the trees was a permanently open area - it wasn't lawn and we didn't water it, but it was always green and didn't grow high enough to need mowing.

At one end of the half circle of trees was the well, and just a few steps away, the kitchen door on a porch. It was an ordinary one story farm house, rather small; just the kitchen, living room and two bedrooms. Opening out of the kitchen at the back was a large cellar dug right into the slope, so it was mostly underground. It had a dirt floor with boards to walk on between rows of shelves on each side. In hot weather Mother would pour a bucket or two of water on the floor, which kept it cool. She kept the milk and butter there, as well as all her canned fruits and vegetables.

There was a large wood cooking stove in the kitchen and a large table and chairs where we had our meals. There was a wood heating stove in the living room. Our lights were kerosene lamps. The floor in the living room (sitting room it was called in those days) was covered by a woven carpet, made my Mother's mother. It was woven in strips and sewed together, put down over clean straw and stretched as tight as possible, then tacked down on the edges. Every so often, surely not every year, Mother took this whole thing up, took it apart, washed it, sewed it back together and put it down again with clean straw underneath. Mother did her own papering too. I remember once when she was going to re-paper the living room, she let us write and draw all we wanted to on the old paper. What fun!

There were several other buildings in the yard with the house. An old cabin, which probably was the original house, was quite a little way from the house we lived in. We girls used part of it as a playhouse when we were a little older. There was also a smoke house where we cured the meat, and a root cellar (dug into the ground) where the vegetables and apples, etc., were stored. Also the chicken house was by one fence of the yard, quite a long way from the house, but the chickens had the run of the yard. Across the fence was the pig pen and a large fenced pasture where the pigs were kept. This had a small stream running through it where they could make their wallowing holes. There was a line of trees along this stream. The water must have come from a spring.

We had two large barns across the road from the house. One was an old log barn where the milk cows were kept - this had a corral on one side, where we did the milking. Another larger barn made of lumber was home for the horses; it had a large space for storing the farm machinery and our buggy. Both barns had hay mows which were great for playing games whether full of hay or empty. Its a good thing my hay fever didn't start until I was older!