Home Sweet Home

I have long liked to write that, “Everyone is welcome at 1840 Farm.” I like the idea that you feel welcome here whether that means you have walked through the physical doors of the farmhouse in person or you are visiting our farmhouse online.  

Yet I haven’t shared much of the inside of the farmhouse with you over the years. Sure, you’ve seen plenty of the outside of the farmhouse, the barn, and the gardens, but not much of the interior. I had good reason for making that decision and it seems like the right time to explain why I did. 

I started writing a blog and sharing my thoughts about life here on this old farm back in 2010. At first, I was writing and no one other than my family was reading. The blog was more of a diary, a way for me to fulfill my need to create things. I am happiest when I am exercising my creative muscle and writing a blog gave me a productive way to do that while raising our children and tending to the needs of our small farm.  

Not long after I published that first blog post in August of 2010, I was fortunate enough to land right into the field of possibilities of writing for other online and print publications. When that happened, suddenly there were actual readers on our blog. People other than my family were reading my words and learning about our lives here in this old farmhouse. It was a reality that I hadn’t dreamed of when I wrote that first post. 

At the time, our children were little children. This farmhouse that I was writing about was their home and I wanted to do everything I could to keep it that way. So, I decided not to share photos of our children and to share limited photos of the inside of the farmhouse. I never wanted my family to feel like I was oversharing their lives, like I was inviting the world into our private home without asking their permission to do so. I could pretend that I made the decision strictly to protect their privacy, but it was also to protect mine.  

I never wanted our children to worry if an impromptu candid photo I took might be shared with the world. I didn’t want them to question if a photo I took was for me as their mom, or for me as the person that was often writing about our gardens, our old house, and the food I was cooking and baking.  

I liked that they could make goofy faces when I captured a photo of them without wondering where that photo might end up. Those family photos stayed right here, with me, to be kept in the time capsule a parent keeps. They were only for me, a treasure to remind me of the era when they were little children no matter how many years ago that moment was frozen in time.  

All these years later, I’m not sorry to have made that choice. Sure, I passed up a few opportunities to share more of our personal lives with the world, but I was always glad to have our private lives here in this old farmhouse purely for ourselves. I was happy that my children could be children within the safety and privacy of our home. This old farmhouse was a home above everything else and it was my priority to make sure that it always felt that way. 

Now I find myself at a place in my life when our children are no longer little children. It’s funny how quickly that happens, how the days that often seem long turn into years that pass by in a blink. Our children don’t need me to mother hen them with the quite the same fervor that I used to. The old farmhouse doesn’t either. 

I will admit that I still feel a bit guarded about oversharing the home that we live in. We really live here. We, and I mean mostly me, track hay into the mud room every day.  There are dust bunnies in the corners and Penny Lane’s toys nearly overtake the old parlor room.  

I like it that way. It makes me smile to think that Penny Lane piles her toys up behind the couch in the parlor in full view of her favorite window each day as if she is once again laying claim to that space. The bigger the pile of plush toys, the more she seems to think it proves that she is on duty. She sets up with a carefully chosen battalion of plush friends behind her, guarding that window to keep us safe from the harm of passing joggers, or worse, squirrels frolicking about in the front yard. 

It’s the squadron of Penny’s plush friends, the scraps of hay from my morning chores, and the pile of loose threads near the sewing machine that make this house into our home. Yet it doesn’t always lend itself to being Instagram photogenic and ready to wow readers.   It’s not a perfect house and I don’t want to pretend that it is. 

The photos of houses I see in my Facebook and Instagram feed are perfectly decorated, designed, staged, and curated. They are beautiful. I marvel at them when I see them. Honestly, their perfection doesn’t suit me or my daily life any more than it does Penny Lane and her toys.  My days include tending to chickens, ducks, goats, and the garden and I have the messy muck boots to prove it. 

I don’t want to put my energy into pretending that our house is perfect because it isn’t. I’m much more interested in enjoying a cup of tea on the couch with a snoring Penny Lane beside me than staging a photo that presents our house as if it is always tidy and neat as a pin. Your newsfeed doesn’t need another “perfect” house with photos where everything is freshly painted, perfectly decorated, with nary a thing out of place. 

Yet I do want to start sharing a bit more of the authentic home we live in, the one that is this old farmhouse I am forever writing about. I have decided to start with my favorite room in the house and the one that is most connected to you as a reader: the farmhouse kitchen. This kitchen has long been my favorite place to be. It’s the place where I cook and bake for my family, where we gather on pizza night to eat family style around the kitchen table with Penny Lane waiting underneath the table in the hopes that she’ll be rewarded with a taste.  

In a few weeks, I’ll be inviting you into the farmhouse kitchen. You can take a look back with me at the original kitchen from when farmhouse more than 15 years ago along with photos of how it looks today along with my plans to renovate it myself in the coming months.  I hope that you’ll follow along as I share what the future holds for this kitchen and how I hope to transform it. I can’t wait to bring you along for the adventure.

As for my family, I think that I’ll keep them to myself a bit longer. Don’t worry, I’ll keep right on sharing our beloved rescue pup Penny Lane. She’s too sweet to keep all to myself!