Garage / Summer Kitchen
Garage / Summer Kitchen
The building directly west of the Granary was multi-purpose. Its main structure functioned as a kitchen in the summer and a garage in the winter.
To keep the house cool in the summer, it was typical on many farms at the time to have a summer kitchen so cooking and baking would not heat up the house.
The Garage/Summer Kitchen is where the family butchered and processed meat. A meat hook is still present in the rafters and the stove still stands in one corner of the building. Shelves on the wall held jars of processed food.
Attached on the east side of the building is the original chicken coop. Over the years, all the clay originally used for the building’s roof has washed off into the coop, covering the original floor with 2 to 3 feet of dirt. When a new chicken coop was built, the old chicken coop was used for coal storage.
A platform outside the chicken coop held a barrel of kerosene with a spigot. The Hutmacher children remember that one of their tasks was to use this to fill the kerosene lamps used to light the house.
On the west side of this building, a patch of black ground indicates where the family originally stored coal for heating and cooking.
Garage / Summer Kitchen
