This red house in Whitefield, Maine sits on a knoll overlooking rolling fields in what was once known as Ball Town, Maine. The house (and county) are over two hundred years old. An interesting story on "Mainething.com" written by Ann Marie Maguire tells more about the house. As caretaker, I am interested in learning what life was like for those who lived here over the many years. Through this blog I hope others will appreciate its historical aspects and aesthetics.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
the old barn
Here is a building from the past; a ghost really, since it no longer stands. It is the old barn that was once attached to the house and had to be torn down. It dared to fall down otherwise. I wonder what it looked like inside and the crew of people who built it. People don't build like this anymore. The wood was likely milled right here in Maine and some of it could have come right off the property. There used to be a long stone wall leading away from the house. That was all that remained of the old barn back in the early 1980s. Old tools, rusty nails, bits of glass and other odds and ends would turn up in the grass every now and then in the small field next to that stone wall. It only takes a little imagination to wonder what else is buried by the red house.
Good soil makes for bountiful harvest
Good soil and hard work produced bountiful fall harvests each year, for the Maguire family and for those who lived on this land in years past.
"We had a very productive garden in the field below the house," said Ann Marie Maguire. "Though my children said its best production was glacial leavings as they picked rocks in the spring!"
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Keeping Room
Here is the Keeping Room. See the small, cast iron doors on the right of the fireplace? They are still operable and a nice place to bake bread, a pizza or keep food hot. Note the wrought iron hooks in the beams where the cook would hang herbs to dry in front of a roaring fire. The wood box to the right was built by a crafty visitor to the house one winter, Michael Goelet, with his wife, Hallie and their daughter Anne in 1970. Ann Marie Maguire says, "Under the disintegrating plaster and lathe in the keeping room lurked an original beaded paneling wall, painted with the old brick dust and buttermilk paint."
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