If fate or your fancy has settled you in a new place minus old trees to shade the lawn and porch, wire netting and wild cucumber vines, which grow very rapidly, will furnish a substitute. For keeping provisions I found a well-ventilated cellar better than the best refrigerator. We take out the windows and replace them with two thicknesses of flannel, which are thoroughly saturated with water. At noon time on a hot day evaporation lowers the temperature several degrees, yet the current of fresh air is not obstructed, as it would be with closed windows.
Well or spring water is usually refreshingly cool, so an ice house is really not imperative, though I recommend building a small one if the farm provides good ice, for it is an inexpensive building to construct, rough boards, sawdust and the ordinary handy man’s labor being the only requirements. We did not have one for several years, but then we had a spring-house with a stone floor and shelves, and a wide gutter running all around, through which the water from the spring was conducted, keeping the place almost icy.
Modern improvements are never to be found in inexpensive country houses, so we found that a bathroom or some means of taking an all-over scrub would have to be constructed immediately. We bought a full-sized tin bath tub with a wooden bottom for about seven dollars, and placed it in the little room off the kitchen. A piece of rubber hose was bound tightly to the escape pipe of the bath tub, and carried through the wall out into a box drain, thence to a barrel ten feet from the house, which had no bottom, and was sunk into the ground. From there, of course, the water seeped into the subsoil and disappeared.
We thought it was very fine indeed at first, but later, when our ideas and finances broadened, we replaced it with a porcelain enameled tub and wash bowl, with properly soldered waste pipes into a tile-drain sink three feet deep, to prevent freezing.
A pump over the kitchen sink had been the only water supply, but as that was drawn from a splendid spring several feet above the level of the house, we determined, when investing in a new bathroom outfit, to stretch the purse strings a little further, and put in hot and cold water. A waterback was attached to the kitchen stove, and a sixty-three-gallon boiler attached. It cost twenty-two dollars and seventy-five cents. The bath and basin cost thirty-eight dollars. Fifty feet of one-and-one-half-inch pipe, seven dollars and fifty cents. One hundred feet of half-inch pipe, six dollars. Waste pipe, two dollars. Labor, twenty-two dollars.
When a spring is not conveniently situated, an automatic ram and a cistern will have to be used, and I am told that they would cost about seventy dollars more. Even with the new arrangement of the bathroom, we retain the earth closet, which had been bought some time before, at a cost of twenty-five dollars. It stands with its back to the outer wall, through which a trap-door was cut, to permit the removal and replacing of pans and earth. This is undoubtedly the most inexpensive and sanitary contrivance with which a country house can be furnished.
The next comfort was a telephone, which cost only eighteen dollars a year, including local calls, long-distance calls, of course, being extra charges. That, with the rural delivery and daily paper, brings us stay-at-homes in touch with the great doings of the world and the little interests of our friends.
We deserted the city in March, but experience has taught me that the fall is the best time of the year in which to migrate. There are not so many people looking for country places; the days are bright and cool, the roads in good condition, and there is much that can be done in the garden and orchard to facilitate next spring’s work. By starting poultry in the fall, one can have broilers ready to catch the early spring prices. Moreover, it is the early chick that will make a good layer the following winter.
In the following chapter we will carry the housekeeping into the poultry yard, for that is the best starting point for a self-supporting home.