Sylvia Jorrin's Decemberr 2005 Farm Story

December 2005

The hired man must have painted it. The one Mrs. Greenleaf kept on sufferance because his father had worked for her father. Or something like that. No one who customarily painted anything could have done it. Too many drips and dabs. Subtle, I must admit. One does have to look closely. But none-the-less quite evident. The paint job is on the doors leading from the wood room to the back stairs as well as to the "home art center". The wood room landing houses the two-seater john and the farm office, which was once called the meat hanging room. By me. Because there was and still is a sturdy branch strung across the ceiling, and there was, but isn't anymore, a hook hanging from it. A big hook. It would seem to have been a place from which to hang a deer, long before I arrived. It had no porch leading to it. I built that. The door sill was wagon height. Which explained everything. To me at least. I made shelves and had built a very narrow, very tidy desk, and installed electricity, and hung a scale, and in all ways made it into one of the more certainly functioning rooms in this house of many rooms.

My son, Joachim, came to help me here for three days this weekend. Oh, how I wished it was twice that at least. He saw the farm office, most recently tidied, and told his sister how nice it is. It looked "finished" to him. Better than he'd ever seen it, in fact. He had come to do some very specific things, as well as to keep me company for a little while. And, as the three or four specific things neared completion, but, by necessity, were left uncompleted when he left. I asked mournfully, "What do I do after you leave? Should I continue to address things individually or go for finished rooms?" Of late, and the of late shall be comprised of twenty-seven years on the twenty-first of December, I've had the tendency of "doing", repairing, restoring, decorating the materials, money, or "perfect" workman, turned up. What that has resulted in is a very unfinished house, with nothing completely done, and all rooms in varying stages of completion and no real sense of satisfaction other than that which comes from the immediate task well done.

Joachim has been scraping and sanding the ceiling of my summer bedroom and came this visit hoping to paint it. A structural problem in the ceiling has been addressed but not finished by my carpenter. Plastered two coats. Sanded. And is awaiting a final coat and sanding before it can consider becoming painted. Joachim valiantly addressed the ceilings. He scraped. And scraped. To my amazement I realized it was wallpaper that he was removing rather than sheets of old paint. The very same wallpaper I've been removing from the walls of what is to become the upstairs sitting room. White. Faintly pebbled. Wall paper that someone put on top of a perfectly civilized plaster ceiling. Ten feet above the floor! Madness! Absolute madness! That pretty pale pink room would seem to be nearly "finished". I've lined some of the drapes. Painted the woodwork again. The stenciled floor, twenty-five years after I've done it is still acceptable. There are now two tiny tables mounted on either end of the window seat, perfect, each, for a tea cup and a plate of cookies. There is even the perfect tea cup, and a little silver tray on which it sits, and a special box in which to keep some lemon cookies or chocolate covered orange peel. I need a floor lamp to place beside the little boudoir chair that has been pleading with me to re-upholster it. The hundred year old French ceramic wood stove is still lovely, and still works. Storm windows are being rebuilt. My little art nouveau desk shall momentarily be re-polished. All-in-all, when the ceiling is painted the same shell pink as the walls, with just a bit more shine to it, gleaming nights, glowing mornings, and I finish embroidering the images of the trees that are outside the window and the French knot sheep that are beneath them on the linen drapes then the summer bedroom may be very close to finished.

And so, in answer to my son's suggestion that I "go for finished rooms", I took a can of that sterling product that seems to find its own use throughout my house, Min-Wax, polystain, Olde Maple, and a sponge roller, and went to the wood room, of course. I also took a sponge and a bucket of hot water and Pine Sol and scrubbed down the door leading from the wood room to the "home art center". I scrubbed the old and beautiful roller with Brillo, barely let it dry and attached it, the door first, the railing and spokes second with a sponge on a stick, not quite dripping with "Olde Maple" Min-Wax poly shades. I even took a scrub brush to the landing, but didn't get too far with that. It was beyond formidable. I've been organizing and tidying the wood room in anticipation of the eight face cords of wood that have been announcing its arrival for weeks now, and so it was a matter of joy rather than necessity that I filled a small wooden crate as well as a cylindrical bin with pine cones for kindling, hung my favorite orange jacket-shirt, face out on a dark brown barn wood and wall and in all ways attempted to make it "nice".

I allowed myself the fantasy of having the mason now rebuilding the foundation replacing a stone or two in the floor that had been broken in the sixteen years since the floor was laid, and buying metal garbage cans, new ones, with the lids, in which to store the goat grain that finds its way into the wood room from time to time, which cost money, not in my budget this week or month for that matter. I'm having the foundation rebuilt and some other major work done now, before the snow flies again and little things seem less likely to be addressed than ever, none-the-less. The wood room of all the rooms in the house can be brought most likely to "completion" if that word can ever be used here. And so I attacked it. I didn't finish it, of course, although I've been known to finish some things. But I did manage to get two coats on the door to the home art center. Complete with the obligatory drip, the light is unforgiving in that room, but particularly absent in the corner on the landing. I am almost finished painting the railing and the spindles. The parts well scrubbed are done. I held a candle to the door edge to see if the recent jacking up of the floor beneath it had tightened it any. It hasn't. And in all ways I made a modest effort, but achieved a major impact in that one room. A gesture towards completion.

Tomorrow the possibility of the arrival of eight weeks worth of firewood may be realized. Probable? Maybe. Conceivable? Perhaps. None-the-less, given that anything is possible in any given moment, anything could happen. I've stacked some of the wood that has been outside on the lawn and begun to tear out a corner that once was a set of stairs and is now filled with boxes of kindling that have afforded comfortable nests for the legions of mice that have lived well in that room over the years. I hear them now. Last year at this time the room housed a formidable twenty face cords of firewood that kept me cold the second half of the winter, but that is another story. This year only three face cords are undercover up stairs. Two more in the basement. There is a diminishing pile on the lawn. Long. Deep. It was supposed to have been split last spring. It looks as if it has been split last week. I moved and stacked thirteen wheel barrow loads full yesterday. Perhaps the wood room shall soon be full, as full as last year.

Joachim made a valiant effort in a room that has been nothing better than a disaster for five or six years now. It became a box room for generations of the family. I've started peeling off wallpaper, pulling down some old and heavy plaster, and discovering new old things about the room.

The bottom most layer of wallpaper is pretty. Freer in design than the later ones applied in the 1920's and 30's. I'm saving it to perhaps copy as a stencil. The molding around the pocket doors had been cemented and covered with wallpaper. What's left of the ceiling has a lovely curve to it. Jeff Wilcox is confident he can reproduce it. I've already had framed two engravings for the room. This has restored a feeling I have missed for awhile. The feeling of discovery. The impetus to work later into the evening. And a little harder in the day. To dream once again.

I see Mrs. Greenleaf in my mind's eye when she first created a home from this house. She had far more help than I could ever dream of having. There are four servants bedrooms here and a servants dining room plus two kitchens, and one large bathroom with a copper tub for the servants as well. And a two-seater john inside. Daily help came from East Meredith, as well. And here now is merely one farm hand, called me, myself and I. One housekeeper, also called me, myself and I. As well as the bread winner, bread baker, scullery maid, and shepherd, all with the same name. But it has been a sense of Mrs. Greenleaf's presence, the very first mistress of the house that I have felt the past few days. The past few days I have been the farm laborer, the one on the sufferance who put a strike on the door over its third coat of paint the other evening. A drip here and there. A smudge. And a drop or two on my hands. I have been that farm laborer. Imperfect. Well intentioned, doing the best I could in haste and yet with a willing heart.

Mrs. Greenleaf found it satisfactory. In fact she said thank-you. A room nearing completion.