Summer Kitchen

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Some summer kitchens get top billing, like this one at Summer Kitchen Farm in Pennsylvania. Joann Condellone, www.SummerKitchenFarm.info

When the heat of summer descended, before the days of widespread rural electrification, many a farm’s culinary captain moved the cook stove out of the house and into a smaller single-room building called the summer kitchen. It was a wonderful purpose-built structure where the year’s canning, preserving, pickling and processing all took place on a wood-fired stove that generated enough excess heat to chase anyone out of the main house.

I grew up on a Wisconsin century farm, and our family’s summer kitchen sat a few steps away from the house. I assume it was constructed around the same time as the house, which was in 1865. Perfectly rectangular, our summer kitchen was originally made of logs and had been sided with boards. The building had two windows on each side, a brick chimney, and a solid, oak door, complete with glass doorknob.

My father replicated the original interior of our summer kitchen with a white enamel and black iron cook stove as its centerpiece. He did some baking and cooking there and allowed me to watch as he took a black iron handle, pried open one of the stovetop’s round lids, and dropped wood chunks into the fire below.

Our summer kitchen, like most, had enough room for chairs and a table where meals could be served or preparations made. The structures typically complemented the main house with matching paint or outside décor. Ours was quaint and, measuring only 10-by-12 feet, it looked like a cute cottage, white paint, blue shutters and all. The floor, originally made out of logs, was easy to sweep and wash.

While the principal work that took place in the summer kitchen included cooking, baking and preserving, the building was used for many other activities. It was the place where people gathered to make soap, churn butter, clean freshly laid eggs and do laundry. “Cooking” white socks, underwear and shirts in a boiler on the stove was the only way to get those whites their whitest. Baths were also often taken in the summer kitchen, which proved both convenient and private.