The Summer Kitchen
by
Carolyn Saul Logan
Air-conditioning is a modern invention. Many people remember the importance of the electric fan in the hot summer. Evenings were spent on the front porch or on the lawn, cooling off—and hoping the house would cool off before bedtime.
The hottest room in the house was the kitchen. Cooking, preserving, ironing, baking, laundering clothes—all of these activities heated up the kitchen. This was good in the winter but summers were torture for women and girls working in the kitchen.
The answer to this kitchen which heated adjoining rooms in the house was the Summer Kitchen. This was a separate building or an annex that was used as a kitchen during the hot summer months. Being separate from the house, it held its heat away from other rooms.
The Mill Farm House has a Summer Kitchen on the back of the house. A little riddle about this annex tells about the early history of the county as well as the building. The Summer Kitchen was built in Humboldt County, was moved to Mill Farm House from Webster County, its first and only move. How could it do this magical move and do it only once? The answer is that the Summer Kitchen was built in one of those south townships lost to Webster County in 1857 when Humboldt County was re-established. For a short time this territory was split between Kossuth and Webster Counties. So it was the county that moved, not the Summer Kitchen.
The Summer Kitchen was donated to the Humboldt County Historical Association in 1977 by Mrs. Carrie Chantland of Badger. It was moved to its present location early in 1979. Members of the Association rallied around in the customary way to repair and restore this building and furnish it appropriately.
A small cast iron laundry stove sits along the north wall where there is a chimney. A Conservo canner sits on this stove. This double-decker could hold sixteen quart jars of food and steamed them by heating water in the bottom.
A three-burner kerosene stove is also along the north wall. A copper wash boiler sits on it. This was used to heat water for soaking clothes and/or rinsing them. It could also serve the same purpose as the Conservo canner, by putting in a rack that held more jars of food.
The Summer Kitchen holds a wood clothes washer and wringer which must have been pretty hard on clothes—as well as the person operating them. There is no electric cord for the washer—its operator needed solid arm muscles to pump the wooden blades that moved the clothes and the water. Clothes had to be folded carefully before going through the wringer to save buttons from popping off and fingers from getting caught.
Nearly everything in the family wash needed to be ironed and the heavy irons are in the kitchen. They came in sets of three with a snap-off handle and a trivet. The whole set cost $.67 in the 1902 Sears Catalog. Clothes pins were $.03 per dozen. You ironed with one iron while the other two heated on the stove. When the first iron cooled, you snapped off the handle and picked up a hot iron.
Another feature of the Summer Kitchen is the handsome oak ice box. One door opens to the space where an actual block of ice was placed. The local ice man made regular deliveries and he knew how many pounds of ice you wanted—five, ten, twenty, etc.--from glancing at the ice card you placed in the window. He hollered, “Ice! Ice!” as he came through the kitchen door.
The icebox kept food cool, not cold. That’s why you needed your milk delivered daily. The melt water was caught in a pan underneath the icebox and had to be emptied daily. Otherwise it ran over and you scrubbed the floor as well.
A visit to the Summer Kitchen at the Humboldt County Museum is a door to the past that reveals many of the chores that occupied women and girls. Going from the kitchen to the attached porch reveals another aspect of the feminine past—shoes and boots with pointed toes, beaded purses, feathered and veiled hats, long dresses. Both exhibits reveal how much easier and comfortable life is now for women.