Sparrowcroft Farm See "before" picture, below

Click to see Construction

Click to see Animals

Click to see Renovation

The "farm" is a 20-acre, L-shaped lot, once containing a barn from the 1800's, a granary, a carriage house, and a machine shed.  Our hope is to run a horse-boarding operation as well as an apiary, some nursery stock, and to grow and market heritage vegetables and seed.

Main Entry:                  sparrow Pronunciation:              spa'-ro Function:                       noun Etymology:                     Middle English sparow, from Old English spearwa;                                                                               akin to Old High German sparo Date:                                before 12th century 1:  any of a genus (Passer of the family Passeridae) of small chiefly brownish or grayish Old World oscine songbirds that include  some which have been widely introduced; especially:  HOUSE SPARROW 2:  any of numerous finches (family Emberizidae) that are New World birds (as the song sparrow or tree sparrow) resembling the Old World sparrows

The farm house is of structural tile (think terra-cotta flowerpots shaped like hollow, open-ended bricks, stacked open-end-to-end and mortared together) with a stucco first floor exterior and second floor of frame construction with clapboard exterior.  In Minnesota, this type of house is known as a 1 1/2 storey.  It has butterfly dormers, no ridgeboard, and a dry, fieldstone foundation which surrounds an earthen-floored cellar (frequently flooded).      At the time we moved in, there were a number of tenants including, as well as the inevitable spiders, beetles, mice and voles, a large colony of barn swallows under the eaves and a goodly number of small brown bats.  Our barn was the trysting place of the neighbors' dozens of cats, and threatened to collapse upon them at any moment.  At first, the broodmare had to go to a boarding farm, as there was no building or fence on the place suitable to house her.

Main Entry:                   croft Pronunciation:               kroft Function:                        noun Etymology:                      Middle English, from Old English;                                                   akin to Middle Dutch krocht (hill) Date:                                before 12th century 1  chiefly British:  a small enclosed field usually adjoining a house 2  chiefly British:  a small, usually poor, farm often worked by a tenant

The original farmhouse was built in the middle of the 19th century and was destroyed in a house fire a few decades later.  This "new" house was built in 1906.  For water, there was only a 25-foot hand-dug well outside the mud room, off the kitchen.  A new well for agriculture was added in 2004.  We installed the first central heating in this house in December of 2000, shortly after moving in.  About that same time we replaced the septic tank and installed a "mound" (a leach field elevated to raise the effluent runoff above the high water table.)  Our neighbor, who once owned the entire 100-acre parcel, owns the abstract, which records the history of the place from its first homesteading.  It tells the story of terrible hardship, few successes and a huge number of disasters.      Shortly after arrival, we realized that our camper would not be warm enough to house us throughout the winter while we renovated the house, as we had hoped.  We bought eight cords of white-oak firewood and some camp beds and moved in, thus beginning the battle against decay, the "other tenants" and decades of poor maintenance which we're still waging, five years later.

Please click on the links at the top of the page to see house renovation, our animals, demolition of our old barn, and construction of the new barn with art studios, tack room and stable. Home          Jan's Paintings          Vriesen & Vriesen Studios           Deborah's Art         Icons