JUST A LITTLE OLE COUNTRY PLACE

KENTUCKIAN -- MISS FAYE

"It's just a little ole country place," were the words that tumbled out of Miss Faye's mouth as I complimented her on her charming home. "I've been living here for sixty years raising chickens, gardening, smoking hogs for meat, canning and doing general farming. My husband and I did pretty much everything to make it work."


Miss Faye smiles when she talks about her place in Appalachian country. She is eighty-two and gets around well except for a hip that bothers her. She had spent the morning weeding before I stopped by to talk with her. 

Her  home place is a tidy place, very peaceful, with no surrounding neighbors. It snakes along a dirt lane that is lined with her outbuildings. 

Her home was a shack, she says, when she and her husband  moved into the place sixty years ago. They fixed it up and added an addition on the end. It is a one story with a "sittin" porch on the front of the house. She can sit on any one of the several older pieces of furniture that line her porch -- a couple of rockers, a porch swing or a bench -- all looking very comfortable. 

Every part of her home looks homey and serene. Her wood outbuildings are beautiful with a natural patina -- built by her husband years ago. Lots of flowers parade around her yard -- pods of iris' were in full bloom today.

MISS FAYE'S ROOT CELLAR

The hillside root cellar across the lane from her home was built by her and her husband right after they moved to the land. The large rocks surrounding the cellar were found around their place and moved to the cellar area.


She told me that she used to can and store the jars in her cellar each year along with such root crops as potatoes. She no longer gardens  so the cellar is not used for food storage anymore.

MIS FAYE'S SMOKE HOUSE

Hogs were raised as food for the table. They built a smokehouse to smoke their meat. Above is a photo of the smokehouse they built. An old zinc washtub hangs on its exterior wall. Large strap hinges have kept the wood door straight and working over the years. Flower pods crisscross around the structure. 

MISS FAYE'S DIRT LANE

A dirt lane curves through their land adding softness to the landscape. Her old earthy barn dominates the other outbuildings.

MISS FAYE'S CHICKEN COOP

In the above chicken coop, Miss Faye raised chickens. She says that farming is a lot of work. Her husband has passed away. Work around her place is taken care of by her son. Her grandchildren help her run errands. She is fortunate to have a wonderful helpful family living nearby. Families helping each other is common in Kentucky. 


I think of this place as I ride back toward home. I realize this place is real -- not some magazine article on country living. There are many stories that reside in such a place -- real stories of life. May such places continue to be. 

KENTUCKY SMOKEHOUSE -- BOX CONSTRUCTION

SMOKEHOUSE -- Where meat is cured from a slow hardwood fire. Usually the smoked meat is stored in the smokehouse after being cured.

The above smokehouse sits on the Rodgers-Trible Homestead in Madison County, Kentucky, just outside Richmond. It is part of a large restoration effort by the Madison County Fiscal Court and the Battle of Richmond Association.

Presently the Rodgers-Trible Homestead is closed to the public. All outbuildings extant on the property appear to be untouched since becoming part of the museum homestead property. The exception is with what is believed to be a slave house -- it is presently under major restoration due to a severe state of decline.

It was a pleasure to walk the grounds (with permission) and be the only one peeking and peering into the outbuildings. Sometimes outbuildings are not appreciated for their "language" that "talk and tell" the history of a place. Hopefully, the buildings on this place will be left in their original state and only maintained as needed -- keeping their character. Every piece of an old structure is a story.

The Rodgers-Trible Homestead was settled in the early 1800s. As with all properties, over time, they change. The smokehouse is box board construction, a type of construction popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. A shed roof structure is attached on the side -- perhaps constructed after the smokehouse was erected? The smokehouse sits perhaps 30 feet or so from the rear door of the main house. Even though it is labeled a smokehouse, it could have been used for various other rural uses.

Could the metal roof of the smokehouse have been wood shingles at one time? There are dirt floors inside both the smokehouse and its attached shed. Only one door leads into the smokehouse and one door into the shed. There is not a connecting interior door between the shed attachment and the smokehouse. Stepping into the smokehouse is accomplished by using a low elevated slab of quarried limestone.

The shed's one and only window is now empty of glass panes. It acts as a frame for the ancient tree just outside. As I walked about the large section of property I felt an eerie sense of people who once lived and worked there. This always seems to happen to me when I come across an empty homestead. I look for shadows of use on the buildings and paths worn over time. These shadows represent the living of a time past.