Summer at the Farmhouse

As summer begins, I have time to reflect on what it means to be a farmhouse docent.  This time of year, new farm babies can be seen everywhere.  Visit the barns to see piglets, chicks, and lambs.  During the summer months, the farm wife is busy, too, with canning fruits and vegetables.  The farmhouse displays canning jars and an old canning pot where we talk about canning although everything is just pretend.  A cup of sugar sits on the kitchen table for the strawberry jam.  But look closely at the sugar; it is only made by collecting the rubbings from two Styrofoam pieces.  The strawberries are made from plastic but look real with a few silk leaves still attached.  A little bit of “farmhouse magic” is in the air.

Docents see a variety of visitors to the farmhouse from children who like the farmhouse but really want to see the farm animals, to retirees who like to reminisce of days past.  They will tell you their mom or grandmother had a wood burning kitchen stove like we have or their memory is triggered by some other farmhouse object.  Everything in the farmhouse is old nothing is “new-fangled.”

As the summer heats up, the docents make sure to have plenty of drinking water nearby as the temperature rises in the non airconditioned farmhouse.  After a shift of giving tours our mouths can go dry but all the farmhouse docents go home happy.  Their short time at the vintage farmhouse revives and refreshes as only a day on the farm can do.