Porches

To enter my grandparents’ farmhouse was to set foot into a rich and wonderful world. Whether you entered from the front or the back on your way to the spacious and busy farm kitchen, you first had to pass through a smaller entry room or porch. These were not simply entryways. They were intimate spaces that often contained the farm’s seasonal bounty. Each one met you with it’s own unique introduction to the life and workings of the farm.

In fall, the sunny front porch was home to bushels of yellow and red apples from the orchard waiting to be made into applesauce, apple butter or apple pies. It was also a temporary home for winter squash, onions, potatoes and carrots before they were carried to the cellar for winter storage and protection from the icy weather. It also was a storage place for boots, hats, work clothes, and aprons that hung neatly from hooks on the wall.

The back porch was altogether different. This roughly 5x10-foot room was built, on the north side of the house, it was always cool and dark—a good place to keep perishables. In summer it held a wide variety of garden produce—much of which contributed to my grandparent’s income—flats of raspberries, strawberries, buckets of plums, bunches of green onions, bowls of green beans and peas.

The north porch also served as a processing and storage room for the family egg business. Wire and reed baskets of freshly picked white eggs arrived there first before passing through my grandmother’s homespun, yet very efficient, quality control process. It began with the candling process, which took place with doors closed, window shade drawn and overhead light turned out. I was always eager to “help” with this seemingly magical and intimate ritual, the manual inspection of each egg. In the darkened room, the only illumination came from a hole, only slightly smaller than an egg, which had been cut out of the top of a wooden box containing a light bulb. Standing on a stool, close alongside one of the adults, I would watch as each egg was momentarily set in the shining recess and thereby set aglow. The light would reveal any dark areas that would indicate the egg was not suitable for sale. Those rejected eggs became valuable food for either the dog or the pigs. Each egg was also weighed, sorted, and if needed, washed with a damp cloth. As we worked, the room would slowly fill with neat stacks of crated eggs and eventually be loaded into the old panel truck that serviced the weekly sales route to the north shore of Turtle Lake and St. Anthony Park.