This Old Farmhouse and Me

Seventeen years ago this week, this old farmhouse became our home. Somehow, nearly two decades have passed yet the memory of that day is fresh in my mind. I guess it’s really no wonder that it remains vivid in my memories. My life changed once this farmhouse became a part of it. You simply don’t forget moments like that.

I have written about moving to the farmhouse before. It’s not a new topic for me. At the time, it didn’t seem all that remarkable. It didn’t seem courageous or adventurous. Even years later when Real Simple Magazine decided to profile our move as part of an article about women who made big changes in their lives, I didn’t feel like moving into this old farmhouse was all that noteworthy.

It just felt right, like it was what we were meant to do all along. We had been looking for a larger space since discovering that our family of three would become a family of four. We toured countless houses and none had even felt close to right for us. If you have ever looked at apartments or houses as a prospective renter or buyer, you know what I mean.

You walk through someone else’s home and try to imagine moving your life into the space, making it your own. For the most part, it just doesn’t seem like the pieces fit together quite right. Sure, you can live in any space, make the humblest of spaces feel like home with time. Yet there’s a feeling you are searching for with every bit as much necessity as the feasibility of the structures you visit.

I can’t explain why this old, abandoned farmhouse felt right. It shouldn’t have. It was empty. It had been empty for months, perhaps as long as a year by the time we came inside to have a look. It felt hollow, like a carcass without a soul to fill it.

There was a sadness to the space. Without furnishings, every sound echoed off the walls. On a summer day with no central air conditioning, it was hot and stuffy. The air was stale and it felt a bit lonely inside.

There was no warmth or feeling of home provided from someone’s belongings. There were no photos on the walls, no plants perched near a sunny window. There were only a few industrial looking floor lamps set on timers to give the impression to passersby that the house wasn’t empty. No matter the light provided by those lamps, it was painfully empty inside.

Yet I stepped inside and despite the flaws, the immediate cleaning and repairs that needed to be made before anyone could move in, it spoke to me. It whispered to me in that voice I had been looking for. I had found that connection I had been looking for.

I had no business listening to that voice. I had no right to form a bond with this forgotten space. It had been left behind by the last family to call it home. How could I possibly imagine that our family could make it into ours?

Yet I did almost immediately. I looked past the filthy purple carpet in the family room. I ignored the water trickling through the basement’s stone walls as rain fell outside. I didn’t flinch when I opened a kitchen cabinet to discover an onion that had been left behind so long ago that it sprouted and grown to be well over a foot tall.

All these years later, my husband and I have laughed about that moment many times. Collectively, we can’t decide if we were brilliant for taking a chance on this old house or foolish for thinking that we could breathe the life back into it without it swallowing us whole. I’m not sure which answer is more correct, and the truth most likely lands somewhere in the middle.

I am grateful that we took this leap of faith. I am still glad that we ignored what was wrong with this old farmhouse and chose to focus on what was right with it.

It’s our house now. It has been for some time. Our family became larger and more complete in this house. Our children played here, grew up here. Within these walls, I kissed foreheads, wiped away tears, and tended to scraped knees.

The walls echo with laughter and memories. There isn’t a room in this house where I can’t easily conjure up a recollection of a moment that fills me with the kind of warmth that a treasured memory has the power to do. Loved ones long since gone spent time with us here, have helped to build those memories into the framework of this house like the brick walls that support it structurally.

We laughed. We celebrated birthdays and accomplishments. We shed tears and mourned when the moment called for it. Somehow, this farmhouse seemed to absorb the joy and sorrow in equal measure and become more of a part of the fabric of our family with each event.

Penny Lane came to live with us as a tiny wrinkly puppy here. She put her mark on the windowsill in the old parlor room, her favorite spot to nap in the sunshine and keep watch on the world outside. I could erase that mark, fill it in to make it perfect, but I won’t. Years from now, I will look at that mark of hers and smile at the thought of her. I like knowing that.

I know that a house is just a structure. I’ve moved around enough to know that a house becomes a home when you breathe life in it, when you choose to make it so. The humblest of places can be the most comforting and nurturing if you want them to be. In the same way, the most luxurious spaces can feel lifeless if they are merely a structure filled with possessions but devoid of warmth and connection.

That’s the thing about me and this old farmhouse. Somehow, we’re connected. I’m not sure why or how. We just are. I sometimes feel like it inhales and exhales along with me, that it nurtures me as much as I do my best to be its caretaker and tend to its needs.

That may sound silly. It might not make sense to you that I can so easily ascribe such human traits to a structure of brick and plaster. I think that it would have seemed so to me before living in this old farmhouse. I’m not sure that I would have been able to understand someone else writing these words.

Yet here I sit, inside this old farmhouse with my thoughts and memories of the past 17 years. Penny Lane is snoring on the couch behind me, content that all is well, that we are all safe within the confines of the house she safeguards. As if on cue, she just emitted a deep sigh.

Like her, I am content here in our farmhouse. It’s the place I was supposed to be all along. I just know it.

Want to learn more about this old farmhouse we call 1840 Farm? You can read about moving to the farmhouse, building a chicken coop, adding the first farm animals to our land, being profiled in Real Simple Magazine, bringing home our beloved rescue pup Penny Lane, and turning this old abandoned farmhouse into the place we call home sweet home.