Adopting an Abandoned Farm

Adopting An Abandoned Farm,
by Kate Sanborn

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Title: Adopting An Abandoned Farm
Author: Kate Sanborn
Release Date: April 14, 2004 [EBook #12021]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AN ABANDONED FARM ***

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Adopting An Abandoned Farm
BY KATE SANBORN
1891

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
--FROM GOTHAM TO GOOSEVILLE II.--AUCTIONS
III.--BUYING A HORSE IV.--FOR THOSE WHO LOVE PETS
V.--STARTING A POULTRY FARM VI.--GHOSTS VII.--DAILY
DISTRACTIONS VIII.--THE PROSE OF NEW ENGLAND FARM
LIFE IX.--THE PASSING OF THE PEACOCKS X.--LOOKING
BACK

An old farm-house with meadows wide, And sweet with clover on each
side.
MARION DOUGLASS.

ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM.
CHAPTER I.
FROM GOTHAM TO GOOSEVILLE.
I have now come to the farmer's life, with which I am exceedingly
delighted, and which seems to me to belong especially to the life of a
wise man.
CICERO.
Weary of boarding at seashore and mountain, tired of traveling in
search of comfort, hating hotel life, I visited a country friend at
Gooseville, Conn. (an assumed name for Foxboro, Mass.), and passed
three happy weeks in her peaceful home.
Far away at last from the garish horrors of dress, formal dinners, visits,
and drives, the inevitable and demoralizing gossip and scandal; far

away from hotel piazzas, with their tedious accompaniments of
corpulent dowagers, exclusive or inquisitive, slowly dying from too
much food and too little exercise; ennuied spinsters; gushing buds;
athletic collegians, cigarettes in mouths and hands in pockets; languid,
drawling dudes; old bachelors, fluttering around the fair human flower
like September butterflies; fancy work, fancy work, like Penelope's
web, never finished; pug dogs of the aged and asthmatic variety.
Everything there but MEN--they are wise enough to keep far away.
Before leaving this haven of rest, I heard that the old-fashioned
farm-house just opposite was for sale. And, as purchasers of real estate
were infrequent at Gooseville, it would be rented for forty dollars a
year to any responsible tenant who would "keep it up."
After examining the house from garret to cellar and looking over the
fields with a critical eye, I telegraphed to the owner, fearful of losing
such a prize, that I would take it for three years. For it captivated me.
The cosy "settin'-room," with a "pie closet" and an upper tiny cupboard
known as a "rum closet" and its pretty fire place--bricked up, but
capable of being rescued from such prosaic "desuetude"; a large sunny
dining-room, with a brick oven, an oven suggestive of brown bread and
baked beans--yes, the baked beans of my childhood, that adorned the
breakfast table on a Sunday morning, cooked with just a little molasses
and a square piece of crisp salt pork in center, a dish to tempt a dying
anchorite.
There wore two broad landings on the stairs, the lower one just the
place for an old clock to tick out its impressive
"Forever--Never--Never--Forever" à la Longfellow. Then the long
"shed chamber" with a wide swinging door opening to the west,
framing a sunset gorgeous enough to inspire a mummy. And the attic,
with its possible treasures.
There was also a queer little room, dark and mysterious, in the center of
house on the ground floor, without even one window, convenient to
retire to during severe thunder storms or to evade a personal interview
with a burglar; just the place, too, for a restless ghost to revisit.

Best of all, every room was blessed with two closets.
Outside, what rare attractions! Twenty-five acres of arable land,
stretching to the south; a grand old barn, with dusty, cobwebbed,
hay-filled lofts, stalls for two horses and five cows; hen houses, with
plenty of room to carry out a long-cherished plan of starting a poultry
farm.
The situation, too, was exceptional, since the station from which I
could take trains direct to Boston and New York almost touched the
northern corner of the farm, and nothing makes one so willing to stay in
a secluded spot as the certainty that he or she can leave it at any time
and plunge directly into the excitements and pleasures which only a
large city gives.
What charmed me most of all was a tiny but fascinating lakelet in the
pasture near the house; a "spring-hole" it was called by the natives, but
a lakelet it was to me, full of the most entrancing possibilities. It could
be easily enlarged at once, and by putting a wind-mill