More Family Photos

My brother's reclaimed log house.

You have seen this log house before on my posts. There are interior photos at the bottom of this page that I've kept up for over a year.  It's a really wonderful salvage of an historic Warren County building. However, it was not the first log cabin my brother built on the property. 


George Van Harlingen Jr, placing a log for the wall of the log cabin he and my Dad built around 1977
 

When we moved to our farm in 1955 there was an old fallen down house on the property. The farm had once been three small farms and around the 1920's the three farms were combined into one 136 acre farm with road frontage on two country roads.  I was four years old when we moved there and the first time we walked back through the property to the abandoned house site we all proclaimed that some day we would build a log cabin there. The site is now Locust Grove Farm and I built my house not on the foundation of the old house, but on the foundation of its barn.

In the mid 1970's my Dad and my brother decided finally to build the log cabin but to place it next to our big farm pond.  They spent several years cutting logs and building up the walls. Eventually my Dad built a big stone fireplace for the cabin from rocks he and my brother hauled up from the creek and we spent many happy afternoons and evenings cooking over the fireplace, listening to my sister play her violin  and having a family meal by candle light.

 

 

Pictures of the  cabin and my mother's fireplace cooking recipes were included in this cook book by Mary Emmerling. Mary Emmerling was the editor of House Beautiful magazine at the time and credited with starting the entire American country decorating movement of the 1970's and 80's.

The photos for the book were shot in April so Mom used some fresh items that were available from the garden. Our menu in the cook book included pan-fried bluegill fillets caught fresh from the pond, our family staple of creamed dried corn, wilted lettuce salad, skillet corn bread cooked over coals from the cabin's fire and rhubarb pie. Here is the recipe for the rhubarb pie, one of our very favorite things.

Patty's Rhubarb Pie

 

Pastry:  2  1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour (sift the flour into the cup measure), 2 teaspoons salt, 3/4 cups vegetable shortening (Crisco) and sugar for sprinkling on top crust.

 

Filling:  3 cups diced fresh spring rhubarb, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup all purpose flour.

 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Make the pastry by combining the flour and salt in a large bowl. Remove 1/3 cup of the mixture to a small bowl.  Add 1/2 cup cold water to the flour in the small bowl and stir well to make a smooth paste. Set aside.

 

To the large bowl of flour mixture add the shortening and cut it in with a pastry blender or two table knives, until it resembles coarse meal.  Add the paste and stir quickly with a fork to blend until the dough forms a ball.  Divide the dough in half. Wrap one piece in plastic and refrigerate. 

 

On a lightly floured surface roll out the remaining piece of dough to about 1/8 inch think. Fit the dough into a 9 inch pie pan and set it aside. 

 

Make the filling.  In a large bowl, combine the rhubarb, sugar and flour. Toss well to coat the rhubarb with the sugar and flour. turn the mixture into the pastry lined pie shell.  Roll out the remaining dough and place it over the rhubarb filling. Trim the edges and crimp them to seal the edges. Cut 4 or 5 small slits in the top crust for steam vents. Sprinkle all over with sugar. 

 

Place the pie on a baking sheet (it may leak some juice) and bake for 20 minutes, lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. Serve warm or at room temperature.