The Farmhouse that Made Me

A nostalgic look back at the house I grew up in

Rooted & Established in Love

“Rooted & Established in Love” couldn’t be a more accurate bible verse to use to describe my connection with my childhood home.  My paternal grandfather purchased the farm ground that included the house in 1942.  My parents moved to the farm in 1949 and lived the rest of their lives on the property.  Additional background about my parents’ life on the farm can be found here:

My parents were older when they had me.  They had lost a baby, Robin, 6 years before I was born. She only lived 11 days.  When I was going thru family papers , I discovered a scrapbook I had never seen.  At first, I thought it was about me but I had already found one about my birth, so I was a bit puzzled.  I opened it and found that it was one that my Mom had put together for Robin.  It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. It started out with her birth announcement and all the letters and cards my parents received congratulating them.  The first half was full of happy mementos. Her birth certificate from the hospital with her little footprint on it was in there, too.  About midway thru the scrapbook, I found her death announcement and the sympathy cards and letters.  It was gut wrenching.

My Mom didn’t talk about it much, so I don’t have all the facts.   Medical technology has come a long way since the 1950s. I knew my sister was born premature and only weighed a little over 4 pounds. I was told that my Mom never got to hold her.  She was in an incubator the whole time she was alive.  Piecing together things I remember hearing and what I found in the scrapbook, I believe Robin caught bacterial meningitis while she was being born.  My Mom spent 6 days in the hospital before coming home. Robin died 5 days later. They only had one picture of her.  Mom must have used the process of making the scrapbook as a way to remember Robin while working thru her grief. Looking back, I don’t remember my Dad ever talking about Robin.  He kept all his feeling tucked away.

As you can expect, the loss of my sister Robin affected them deeply.  I was very sheltered as I was growing up.  And maybe a tad spoiled….

Friends More Like Sisters

My closest friends growing up were the sisters who lived down the road.  The picture below was taken before their 4th sister was born.  My parents were boarding the horse for a friend of theirs.  I am the one sitting in front.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in this house.  I returned for a few months in my early 20s after my first marriage broke up.

In the mid 1990s, I started my first business and my parents let me use a couple of the buildings on the farm for my herb business.  More specifics about that first endeavor can be found here:

 

Solution to Wanting a Bigger House

In 2000, I decided I needed a bigger house than the one my husband & I were living in. I had the perfect solution to the “problem”: my parents needed to either move to Florida or an assisted living place so that I could move back into the farmhouse.  That announcement was not well received by either of them for several reasons.  The main one being they were still very active and weren’t ready for an assisted living establishment.  They came up with the idea of having a modular home build in the back corner of the yard.

My husband & I moved into the farmhouse during July 2001.  The first year was a hard adjustment for my Mom.  While she was really happy that I was back home, she wasn’t really ready to give up her space.   We eventually got thru it.

Being Present For My Parents as They Aged

My Mom had various health challenges and her health really began to fail in 2011.  We lost her in August 2014.  My Dad had health issues also, but we were able to manage them with the assistance of home health care.  Dad really did not want to go to a nursing home.  He managed to stay at home until shortly before he passed away.  He only had two short hospital stays after we lost my Mom.  Dave & I were both involved in taking care of my parents with the help of the home health staff.  Being physically present on the same property helped a lot.  Two of the girls that grew up down the road still lived in the area and they were very helpful in taking care of my parents, especially by bringing them food!

The Truth

It wasn’t the physical farmhouse that made me who I am today, it was the people who lived in the farmhouse and the people they surrounded themselves with who molded me into the person I am today.  It has taken me quite a while to realize that I could physically let go of the farmhouse yet still keep my connection to my parents thru all the memories that I have.

Memories

About a year after my Dad passed away, I decided that it was time we lived somewhere my husband wanted to live.  We had already purchased my Great Aunt’s house in Florida to use as a snowbird home.  I made the decision that we should move to Florida full time.  Even though I was the one that made the decision to move, it still hasn’t been easy.  I have had a hard time emotionally detaching myself from the farmhouse.  I have made a lot of progress, but I still miss it! 

The memories were brought to the forefront of my mind during the Fall of 2024 when the modular home caught fire and was destroyed.  I was a wreck for several days.  The current owners were doing a “controlled” burn during a very windy day and they lost control of the fire.  I happened to be on Facebook when someone posted about a fire north of Ivesdale.  Fortunately, no one was hurt.  

Due to the length of time the homestead was in my family and the fact that my parents and I were/are collectors, it took a little over three years to downsize/clear out the various buildings.  The downsizing journey is detailed in a series of posts titled “Thyme to Let Go: How I Downsized the Family Homestead” part 1 thru 7.  Part 7 with links back to the previous posts can be found here.  

I was back in Illinois twice last year.  During the 2nd trip, I finally drove past the old homestead.  The new owners had removed all the outbuilding and changed the porch.  The house looked different enough that I didn’t start sobbing. 

How the Farmhouse looked When it Was Built in 1893