Plus ca change Monday, Feb 4 2013 

Historical Events acairfearann 11:12

Hartford, Jan 30, 1871; Julie to Morris:

“I have had Such a time with the gas and water, no light for three evenings, and finally found that the pipe was frozen up in the front hall. The waste pipe got stopped up in Mrs. Johnson’s room, and I had just got that cleaned out when the boiler sprang a leak in the kitchen…

The plumber came up and he showed me how to take up the chamber floor and thaw out the gas with boiling water, so that if we have another freeze, I shall be mistress of the situation.”

Gas lighting was by, all accounts, temperamental and apparently prone to freezing.  The current headaches don’t involve gas, but they do still involve water and oil.  It would be an interesting exercise to see if how fast the pipes can be drained, the one great problem with this house is that if, as happened yesterday, it runs out of oil the temperature is going to drop.  While it could be made livable using the fireplaces, one couldn’t keep the plumbing from freezing.  Therefore, if the oil runs out the clock starts.  Thankfully, our oil company is a good one, even if dispatch did screw up.

 

File Shuffling Saturday, Feb 2 2013 

Uncategorized acairfearann 14:55

As these things tend to around here, one thing leads to another…One gets a new freezer…one shuffles the table and file cabinets about to fit it in correctly.  Well naturally, one therefore has to shuffle the inside of the file cabinets right?  There are a few simple rules: if it is in order, keep it in order; if it is a book or bound print, it doesn’t belong in a file cabinet but on a shelf; all oddments go in a drawer concerned with oddments, not scattered through the paper.  Priority in fire-proof cabinets is given to things that really need the space.

So reams of genealogy* get chucked out of the fireproof cabinets, by taking the bound books out, a remarkable amount of space is created.  Slightly random collections are organized, therefore creating more space in what had been thought to be a ‘full’ cabinet.  Voila: a completely empty fireproof cabinet.  How fast do you think we can fill it?

*Disconcerting to see one’s name neatly placed in a book.

 

Confused plants Friday, Feb 1 2013 

gardening acairfearann 15:44

Poking their noses up.  It actually is remarkable how tough some plants are.  Spring bulbs, which only have a few optimal months to grow, flower, set seed, and store energy, have to balance too late with too cold.  Some daffodils, crocus, and snowdrops have thought about starting up, especially in areas with strong south exposure.  They are currently very chilly indeed.  And very solidly frozen.  Still, even in the middle of winter there are signs of spring.

 

Water Wars Wednesday, Jan 30 2013 

Landscapes acairfearann 14:45

Nice, foggy, rainy weather….lots of water….the ground is frozen rock hard.   Entirely too much of that water is going to go running off into the rivers.  Actually, the rather interesting things, for those of us interested in this sort of thing, is that the ground is not frozen solid in the woods.  It is frozen of course, but it retains some ‘give’.  That is to say, anywhere with deep leaf litter has the capability to absorb the water connected to this warm spell despite the extreme cold that came before.  Lawns, hayfields, bare fields; those all might as well be impermeable bits of pavement right now.  Today there are no puddles in the woods, there are on lawns.*  There is also plenty of run-off from the frozen lawns, if there is any slant at all.  Eventually, of course, the sponge quality of the woods will be filled up and the intermittent streams will start to run; but it will take much more water to create an intermittent stream in the woods than one bordering a field, subdivision, or road.

We know that forests are better at recharging ground-water than developed areas.  The immediate assumption is that is solely due to the developed areas using the immediate water and having more impermeable surfaces such as roofs, patios, parking lots, etc.  But it is also due to the fact that forest areas are genuine sponges.  It would be interesting to do a storm-water comparison of two identical house-lots, with identical houses, and the only differences being that one has retained over half of its original tree-cover/topsoil and the other has it stripped to lawn.  I think the result would be sobering.

Water companies used to buy watersheds in this area to protect the water quality.  Inadvertently, and happily for all concerned, they have also helped to protect the amount of water available by doing that.   Of course, it still isn’t nearly sufficient; but it helps. 

Do water-wars exist in the east as well as the west?  Oh, yes indeed!  google: farmington, mdc, uconn, mansfield, etc. to see one in action.

*unless of course your lawn has decided to establish some nice colonies of what look like sphagnum moss, in which case the puddles disappear.

 

Garden seeds Tuesday, Jan 29 2013 

gardening acairfearann 11:24

‘Tis the time! The vegetable garden has quite quickly become remarkably useful.  It is actually a bit too small,* the winter squash have been relegated to the old slope paddock, no longer used for horses, where they are much happier.  The squash, that is; they are designed to sprawl amongst tall field grasses and the bugs don’t seem to find them. 

The variety of seed out there is rather amazing.  But, I most confess, that when part of the aim is to fill a small freezer, there is a certain tendency to prefer the tried and true classics.  Thankfully, the seed companies have sort of caught on to this.  The old, keeping varieties are popping back up again, in and amongst the exotics. 

Certain things won’t grow here without excessive coddling: sweet potatoes and eggplants chief among them.   Also, mysteriously, cucumbers…despite the fact that our neighbor routinely has plenty.  On the other hand, the good New England classics are quite happy: peas, beans, carrots, beets, kale, squash, chard, parsnips, spring lettuce.   Peppers and tomatoes if started right… There is a reason for local cuisine.

*I can see it from Google though (Google sees everything), we have a slight wiggle in the western bed.

 

Concerning letters Sunday, Jan 27 2013 

Uncategorized acairfearann 15:28

One of the most entertaining aspects of the letters between Julie and Morris is the odd aside.  I suspect that it is in part the writing style of the era; but more that because they were apart so much of the time these asides added the visual, day-to-day touches that created an immediacy of connection.  For example, a long letter mostly discussing business, the future prospects of their daughters, plans for Esperanza and the employment of a farmer is abruptly broken:

“There is an organ grinder under the window in the driving snow, and my Kitchen Goddess has just bestowed upon him a quart paper of something and great handful of cookies.”

and then the letter returns to business.  An otherwise dry letter suddenly has a visual element in it and is forcibly brought into time.  Morris, sitting at his desk in New Orleans, has an image of a street scene and a well known view from a desk in Hartford.  Skype for nineteenth century.

 

Architectural chronology Saturday, Jan 26 2013 

Esperanza acairfearann 13:15

One of the interesting aspects of the house is its growth over time.  This is fairly common with New England houses; the classic farmhouse that keeps getting lengthened.  It is not common with the surviving summer houses/estates built in the post Civil-War era.  This is a permanent tension in the house’s history, generated primarily by finances, no doubt its level of charm depends on the bank book.  The questions of identity so beloved of curators spring immediately to mind.

But a bit more on simple (ha!) dates:

c.1790-1810 for the center section, your classic post and beam cube.  Two and a half stories with a full height basement.*  Ceilings are sevenish feet.

c.1830-40 for the first dining room/southern extension.  At this time the facade is changed.  The house now appears as a Georgian farmhouse with a small southern kitchen ell, which is as long as but only half as wide as the cube.  This extension has a full-height basement, but is not as tall as the cube, being only one and a half stories above-ground.   The basement is now daylighted at its south end.

1874: the dining room is expanded on both sides; the two rooms above are created by popping the roof.  The height of the extension now matches the cube.   The dining room is painted PINK.  The length of the house does not change.  The southern extension is now about two-thirds the width of the cube. 

1875?: the extension to the west of Opposite-To-It, one of the rooms in the original box, its west wall is popped out by about four feet, creating a lovely, sunny bay…unfortunately it leaks cold air like a proverbial sieve.  The west and south sides of the cube are now obscured.

1878: the South End is added.  What was a three-story barn originally is refinished inside and tacked on to the south wall of the kitchen/dining room.   The bottom two stories are post and beam, presumably the third is as well.  It is the same width and height as the southern extension.  Three sides of the basement actually open at ground level.

1893: the North End is added, along with the porches.  It adds another quarter in length and is the width of the cube plus a bit.  It is a true three and a half stories in height, putting it a story taller than the cube and southern sections.  This massive section gives the house its distinctive appearance as an apparent early Shingle-style building instead of the rambling Georgian/Federal farmhouse with a few Queen Anne flourishes.  This section is not post and beam, rather it is balloon-framed and consequently a very different building to work with.  This building buries the original cube almost completely, it is now only visible on the east facade.

1890s-1960’s: the three-story porch on the west wall of the South End is gradually enclosed, making it wider than the dining room section.

?? Now, those of you that know the house, should spot a missing bit: ‘Hole In the Wall’ the distinctive feature built out over the east porch with the round red window.  There is a problem.  Lucy Creevey puts it down to 1881.  The photographs and oral history have it placed around 1873-75. ..this requires some research.  And is what I get for trying to run the dates off the top of my head???

However, having happily confused all of you who don’t know the house!

*what’s the ‘and a half’ story? Attic crawlspaces, really simply the roof structure above the ceiling of the rooms below.  Unfinished and uninsulated.

 

 

 

Brr Friday, Jan 25 2013 

gardening acairfearann 22:59

Still a bit chilly.  The good thing, a very good thing, is that this is just the sort of cold spell that helps to check nasty bugs like wooly adelgid on hemlocks.  It will still be here, of course, but every year one can keep ahead of it…! 

I am rather glad that there is just a touch of snow on the ground at least; it helps to protect the plants from complete desiccation.  The rhododendrons don’t look terribly happy, but they’ll manage.

In other gardening news, various persnickety seeds ought to be contemplated fairly soon.  You really have to wonder how some of these plants ever grow on their own…freeze it, boil it, soak it, wack it, forget it, what did the poor seed ever do?

 

Not quite on the anniversary Thursday, Jan 24 2013 

Esperanza and Historical Events acairfearann 14:45

A letter written by Julie to her friend Mattie Yale on January 21, 1872:

“Satis Bene lies in ruins, but I have become the happy possesor of the Lyman place, to which Morris and I have given the name ‘Esperanza’ -‘Anchor of Hope’.

So you see, my dear, we are to be neighbours after all. I could not consent to see all our fine plans blown away like the mountain mist before a north wind.”

A bit of background.  Satis Bene had been bought by Julie and Morris in late 1870, a former farm with about 65 acres.  Following the summer of 1871, work was being done on it in November, 1871 when a fire started, burning it to the ground.  Julie then bought the neighbouring Lyman farm on the other side of the road, with another 18 acres.  This became Esperanza.  Satis Bene was rebuilt as a farm house; in the 1960’s Satis Bene and ten acres of the original purchase was sold off.  It is now a winery.

Mattie Yale lived in the house next to the Esperanza lot.  She had been instrumental in causing Julie to fall in love with the idea of creating a summer home in New Hartford, having invited Julie and family out several times.  If one is facing the houses: L to R is Satis Bene, a dirt road, Esperanza, and then the Yale house (then known as the Parsonage or Eaglesnest).

It says nothing good about the state of farming in the area that it was cheaper to buy up another farm rather than rebuild…  By that time the top of the hill, once a bustling town center, was virtually abandoned.

 

Photo of the day Wednesday, Jan 23 2013 

Modern Photos acairfearann 00:07

IMG_4508

 

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