Bucks County farms

Mom in front of the "Hill Farm"

In the 1940's, our maternal grandparents Herman and Anna (along with their grown daughters Margaret and Ruth) moved from Philadelphia to this farm on the outskirts of Quakertown, PA. They raised rabbits and sheep for meat, and kept an orchard and garden on a few acres.

Those old immigrant Germans were quite frugal and resourceful, so they were probably self-sufficient here for a few years. But our grandfather had restless feet, and they later moved to Colorado. That's another story.

Anyway, this farmhouse is where dad asked Herman for the hand of "city girl" Margaret, who became his wife in 1947. We three kids followed soon after. The Hill Farm was close to our own dairy farm, and I remember happy times there with Dutzie and Grandpa, especially on holidays like Christmas and Easter when they had bunnies and lambs.

Dad said yesterday that the Kenneth Nunamaker painting on the blog looked just like the Hill Farm. I agreed, so I dug out that picture taken of mom, on a visit to Pennsylvania in 1995.  

Yes, the houses are indeed very similar, especially how they sit above the road. However, the roof line is slightly different, and Herman and Anna's house didn't have the upstairs sleeping porch. Of course, the artist may have taken liberties with these things.

There were once dozens of small farms like that scattered through rural Bucks County. The old picture above is our Grammy's farm, where dad grew up in a large extended family.

And it also reminds me of other farm paintings by Nunamaker. I'm so glad we stumbled on this beautiful and evocative artist.