The Homestead

We moved from a lovely historic area of St. Paul, a three story brick house built at the turn of the twentieth century to this. A mess of a house in a rural are, close to the cities but definitely rural. And a mess. Poor Mark, raised on a dairy farm, living a nice life in the city and then....boom. THIS. I saw it and saw potential. He saw it and wanted to run. Fast. He has always had trouble saying no to me and this was not an exception. I got my farm. After we moved here I wondered what I was doing? I had never lived outside of a city in my life. I was nervous about the isolation. My horses didn't come here until spring, months away. I was driving to Stillwater every other day to see them. Stillwater is on the western border of Wisconsin, way east of where I now lived. I second guessed myself often, something I was not prone to doing.

I loved this barn.

This is an after photo, probably taken about seven years ago. The two large box elder trees are now gone. There is a large red cedar now in front of the screened porch. There were two of them, but they were overtaking the house. They seed themselves and grow fast. The red door and window trim is now white. Other than that it's the same. It took a lot of work and a couple skilled guys to get it done. This is the house Dick,  Patrick and Sandra built.

This house has three eras. The round end, going to the screened porch is the newest, 1985. The middle, where the screened porch is was part of the original farmhouse. It was two stories. The farmer removed the second story and built a rambler addition to the west in 1973. I don't know when the farmhouse had been built. We put the screened porch on in 1994. The foundation had been laid by the previous owner who didn't finish it. He had plans to put a second story on the 1973 addition and left the blueprints with us. We didn't need a second story.

I was painting the veranda floor, which is why the furniture is on the lawn. Always, always needing to paint something. I need to paint it again but I haven't been able to.

We painted the barn white. There were six stalls in the barn, we added thirteen more and five more in an attached pole barn. Since my mobility problems the interior has become dusty and cobwebbed  Mark keeps the stalls clean but he doesn't do housecleaning. I'm grateful he takes care of them.

This is the eastern end of the 1985 addition put on by the man we bought from. He was an entrepreneur with a serious drinking problem. He would make a bunch of money, have some work done and then quit. It was a cycle, I guess. He bought from the farm family whose ancestors had homesteaded it in the 1800s. It is a story relayed by neighbors that the father, cheap bastard, wouldn't pass the farm down to his son the way his father and all the fathers before him had done. He wanted market price. So the son moved to a dairy farm in Wisconsin and the man we bought from became the owner.

Mr. Wonderful, aka Zing, when he was perhaps two. He is my remaining stallion and he is also my orphan baby. That's a whole other story.

This post came about after I had posted the Bat Cave photo and I had commented to Val that this place had been a mess. I've shown you the outside, sometime I'll show you what I had to deal with inside. I'm sure I have photos. As part of the Fallon family I must have photos, it's in my DNA. 

I have a strong attachment to this house and property. It's where I finally found myself, the self I could be. Not the one I was repeatedly told I was by a sociopathic mother and a compliant father. I created something out of a shambles. I raised horses, I buried horses. I lived with horses, a whole bunch of wonderful dogs, most of which no one wanted and I grew up.