Farmhouse 302

Today I'm talking with Diana at Farmhouse 302. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe.

00:29
share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Diana at Farmhouse 302 in Delaware. Good morning, Diana. How are you? Good morning. I'm very well. How about yourself?

00:42
I'm good.  It is a beautiful sunny day again in Minnesota. And I say again, because it doesn't happen days in a row all the time.  What's it like in Delaware today? It's sunny today, but it's cold. When I woke up this morning, it was 28 degrees.  But it's sunny and I'm glad to see the sun.

01:03
Yeah, me too. I really love it. And I'm going to say this again, I've said it a couple of times lately. When I sit at my desk to record the podcast, there's a window to my right and the sunlight just streams in that window. So I get to sit here and just look at this beautiful stream of light through the window while I'm talking to people. It's really nice.  Oh,  that's wonderful. So for half an hour, I get to look at sunlight.  It's kind of a beautiful thing, especially when

01:31
Especially when we are known to have three or four days in a row of clouds and then it's like, ah, the sun came back. Thank you. Okay. So this, this episode is going to be what I'm labeling a topics adjacent  episode because you're not a homesteader, but you curate and sell things that homesteaders used to use. So I really want to hear about what you do, Awesome.  Where would you like me to start?

02:01
Where would you like me to start as far as like how I got where I am  or? Yes. Yes. That yes. Well, I'm not. I'm just going to jump right in. I I just turned 60  and I grew up on a farm on a hundred acre farm in Delaware.  And  my grandfather was a mechanic for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

02:29
and he was their fix-it man.  Any part that broke, he could manufacture it, he  fixed anything. And I grew up on the farm with my grandparents.  And  my mother  was born  in 1931, so she grew up during the Depression. So I got firsthand knowledge on how to use something until there was no youth left.

02:57
Um, I grew up learning how to fix tractors, fix lawnmowers.  Um, we had,  basically, I mean, where I lived, even though Delaware is small at that time, it was podunk. Like I lived out in the boonies, so to speak.  And,  um,  I guess you could say we were kind of homesteaders because we had a full garden.  Um,

03:26
We had cherry trees, had apple trees, pear trees, we had blueberries, blackberries,  and we had geese and ducks and all kinds of animals. So that's kind of how I grew up. I learned how to fix things  for  their purpose and just kind of grew up knowing.

03:54
how to use old fashioned hand tools and all that. So that was sort of like, I don't know, I guess the roots of my beginning.  I was always, I was like,  for lack of a better word, I was a feral child that grew up in the woods on a farm.  And I was always a crafter. I was always making something. And a lot of it was,

04:23
You know, I drag home,  you know, sticks and brambles and  grapevines. And I was making wreaths and like when I was like 12 years old, I was always  bringing something. So it's sort of like  been on. Organic path for me.  So I,  I grew up at crafting and painting and making and all of that. And then I met a boy and he was.

04:53
We were in high school  and  fast forward, we've been together 40 years.  And of course we got married. have two fantastic boys.  One lives here in Delaware and the other one  broke my heart and moved to Tennessee.

05:18
And,  um,  there, they took a lot of our time, you know, so of course I had to move into the corporate world. got a job, you know, the whole kitten to bootle. My husband's a contractor. was in banking forever. And then I was just like, one day I was like, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I just, I simply cannot do this anymore. And he goes, so quick. So I quit  and just started, you know,

05:47
painting furniture  and selling it out of my house, paint furniture, post it online, sell it out of my house. And then it got  word of mouth and it just kind of grew from there. I  had done a couple of like  shows, like cramp shows. And then I had the opportunity to move into a brick and mortar building.  So that's, and I've been here now.

06:15
for six years.  And I  keep going.  Tell me about that building because I read a little bit about it on your website.  Oh,  well, the building is a two story farmhouse. It was built in the late  1800s.  It was part of a very large dairy farm in the area.  They raised nine kids in this house, seven girls and two boys.

06:44
And the patriarch of the house  was the  agricultural representative for downstate Delaware.  So  he was  pretty prominent in the political  sense of the word.  So he  made sure that all of his kids got a farm, a small farm at here.

07:14
And many of them have since passed away because the oldest girl that lived in this house died a couple of years ago and she was like 93, 94 years old when she passed. So I frequently get people that come in going, oh, my aunt lived here. This was my great grandmother's place. Or I knew the girls that lived here. it's just so, so nice to hear all the little stories from everybody that have

07:44
been in the house when it was a home, when it was a home. The family still owns the property. We rent the building. we've sort of, we just get a lot of people that are just amazed when they walk in, they just were like, wow, we didn't know this was here. Or some people will say, oh, we thought it was a restaurant.

08:14
all kinds of walks of life that come in and they're just amazed at the building  and uh okay yeah okay family still owns it all right so farmhouse 302  is like an antique shop story yes correct yes

08:32
Okay, so I have questions about this. And thank you for all that information because I love old houses and when people rent or own an old house, like, I gotta know a little bit about the house.  So  I looked at your  website and I looked at your Facebook page and you have the coolest old stuff for sale. But you also make tables. You make tables.  I...

09:00
I love tables because I use them for desks. Like if I could collect tables, I would. If I had room, I would just have like 17 desks. So do you make the tables or do you your husband make the tables? Who makes the tables? My husband builds them and I make them pretty. So yeah, we made my son, actually it

09:28
started when my son came to me when he was getting married and he's like, I'd like this as a wedding gift. And he shows us a picture like that he had  gotten from someplace and we want a table like this. Do you think you could make it? My husband's like, yeah, I can make it. So  the fantastic carpenter that he is, he  made the table  and  then I just collaborated with them. Like they customized the adling. How do you want it? What colors do you want?

09:57
So we worked that all out and we made the table and that was their wedding gift from us. And then I posted pictures online and then everybody's like, oh, I need a table, I need a table.  So  we've  made a couple.  It's not like we have a, like we turn them out at a shop. We have people that come in and say, hey, I saw that you made farm tables. Can you make me one?  We actually had a gentleman, we're working on another one  now at the moment.

10:25
We had a gentleman that bought one from us  four years ago, four  or five years ago, he bought a table and sadly his house was destroyed by fire.  And  he came back to us and he said, hey, can you guys build me another table like the one you did? So we're like, absolutely. So we're in the process of  doing that, only it's gonna be a different color scheme because he's, you know.

10:51
change the color of his flooring and the walls in his house and everything after rebuilding. So that's cool. But yeah, we make  all kinds of tables.  Yeah, that's really sweet that he came back and wanted you to make another one. That's fantastic.  Okay.  So part of the reason I want to talk to you is because I have a couple stories that I felt like I could share with you.  Back  when my husband and I lived at the old house, we

11:18
My life is before and after. Before we lived in a little tiny house and not a tiny house, but a small house. Now we live in a big house like 1600 square feet, which feels huge compared to the house we owned. back when I lived in the old house,  there was this really cute antique shop down the street from where we lived. And we would go in there like once a month just to see what people had brought in to sell.

11:46
This is where the homesteading part comes in because they had this old revere ware percolator, know, coffee percolator. And it had all the parts, Diana, all the parts were there. was usable.  And I bought it.  Yeah, no, no, no, no  No cord. was one you actually use over open flame.  Oh, that kind. Oh, awesome.  Yeah. And, um,

12:13
We didn't have a generator at the old house. So when the power went out, the power was out. But what we did have was a gas stove and you could still use the gas stove even if the power was out. So if the power went out in the winter time, I had a percolator because if I have coffee, I can do anything. So  I this percolator.  I'd never used one before in my life and I learned how to use it.  And percolator coffee is completely different tasting than  the kind you get from the coffee maker you plug into the wall, I swear.

12:42
That was really cool. And  this percolator had to have been at least 50 years old. mean, I love this thing. I still have it. And they also had a coffee grinder, the one where you pour the coffee into the top and you turn the handle to grind the coffee.  And I was like,  I said to the lady behind the counter, said, could we still actually use this to grind coffee? And she said, well, she said, if you take it apart and clean it,

13:13
and then put it back together and run seesaw through it so it has something to catch anything on the gears.  She said it should be fine. And so we brought it home, we cleaned it,  I painted it because it was kind of yucky on the outside  and I still have that too. And so if my coffee grinder breaks, I have one that actually is a manual coffee grinder.  And then the other thing that I'm sure you see at your shop is the traidel sewing machines. Do you see those?

13:45
And spinning wheels. Yes, spinning wheels are amazing. We bought a traidel sewing machine that still worked back when we lived in the old place. And the thing that's wonderful about those machines is they're made to handle leather and denim and really thick material. And so my husband, who I swear he was a housewife in a former life, he loves to bake and he loves to sew.

14:13
So he  figured out how to make that thing go and he made us quilted curtains for our bedroom in the old house because it was so  drafty. So yeah, all these things that you see on a daily basis, we actually  used and still  use even though they're really old and they're not the newest fanciest ways to do it.  I personally, prefer older ones

14:43
Because they're built better  and they're just, you know, they've stood the test of time. And  I personally think that they're constructed  out of better materials and it's better quality. So if I have the option to buy new or if I can get an older one,  I'm getting an older one.  Because I just, I don't know, I just live in that.

15:09
sweet spot,  I guess you could say.  You know, and I try to,  and there's things that we have in here  over  the years. There's been things that we've had in here  that when,  you know, mom comes in and she brings the kids and the kids are like, you know, young teenagers and they'll, what is that?  So I like  to puzzle them.

15:35
And, well, what do you think it would be used for? Look at it and examine it and you tell me what you think it would be. You know, we've had telephones in here, you know, that have the rotary dial and the little, little kids are like, what is that? And they're amazed with things like that. And the old fashioned, I guess you could say the old fashioned ice cube trays. Now, I will say I prefer, I prefer if I'm going to choose a

16:03
refrigerator, I would like it to have an ice maker because of the old fashioned aluminum trays that you put in the refrigerator and you have wait for the water to freeze, then you got to pull that lever back. Yeah, I'm that old. Oh, yeah, no, know what you're talking about. Yeah. So, I mean, we've had things in here and I don't think anything's come in that I've been completely

16:32
Huzzled by.  I mostly because I you know I just feel like I've had just like a lot of life experience like living you know with my grandparents on the farm and going to antique  you know shows and  flea markets and  all that.  Yeah  I seek out the old stuff we have in here we've got some. Cast iron pans and some.

17:02
old aluminum  like big I've got one really big soup I call it a soup pot it's a big aluminum pot  and you just don't see the quality you know in this stores anymore so find the good find the good old stuff use that

17:22
Yeah, the cast iron pans.  I love the small ones. The great big honking frying pans are so heavy. They're too heavy. I have trouble with those because I'm trying to maneuver it and it's too heavy.  My husband and my son  love that pan. We have the biggest frying pan, cast iron. And they're like, we're going to make donuts. And they're like,

17:50
They're like, can we just do it in the big  cast iron frying pan? Is it deep enough? I was like, yeah.  Yeah, you can. And we also have the big, you know, not the big, big, but the big  Dutch oven cast iron pan too that's deeper. Oh yeah, they're nice.  They ended up making donuts in that and that was probably smarter because, you don't have to worry about the oils splashing out the side or anything. It's a little deeper. But cast iron...

18:18
Yeah, cast iron is great. It's just so freaking heavy to deal with. I've got one pan  on a personal note. I've got one pan, one cast iron pan that I got from my mother that belonged to my father's father.  Maybe he's great. I actually had,  I had taken pictures of it and sent it to like a cast iron expert that's here in the Philadelphia area.

18:47
And he said easily that pan is probably late 1700s, early  1800s. which  fits the bill because  my father was older.  My father was born in 1920.  And  yeah.  And he grew up in Brooklyn in the city. So imagine city boy coming from Brooklyn down to a little podunk farm in Delaware.

19:16
Um,  yeah. And his parents were older. I know his dad, think his grandfather, his father was born in like late 1800s. So it's kind of fit that, you know, I'm like, yeah, okay. It makes sense. So, know, that cast iron pan would be that old, but that can't, that pan's my baby.  That pan is my baby.  Um, but, uh, that's history right there.  Yeah, absolutely. Cause you know, I sent it off to pictures of it to him and he  gave me like the information on it and.

19:46
Yeah, I was really happy about that and that was awesome.  Yeah, and that's the great thing about cast iron because as long as it's not cracked  or dented  and you can  dent cast iron, it's hard to do, but you can do it.  You can always strip and re-season cast iron pans. I mean, they're meant to live forever. Yeah, and you can use soap  to clean it.  It's just that back in the day,

20:14
They didn't want you use soap because soap was made mostly of lye. So it would strip a lot of the seasoning off. But today's like you can use  Dawn dish liquid, you know, to clean your cast iron.  It's perfectly, perfectly fine.  Yeah, I really trust this guy. I've not met him, but we've had several conversations  because he's like in like I said, in the Philadelphia area and he has a whole, you know,

20:39
Facebook, YouTube, Facebook page, about TikTok, all about like how to take care of your cast iron.  yeah. saying is, the saying is if you take care of your cast iron, your cast iron will take care of you. Absolutely.  Yep.

20:57
I actually love it. just don't like washing it after when it's the big pan because I'm like, honey, can you move this pan over the sink for me? And he's like, never mind, I will just do it. I'm like, okay, you do it.  weighs 90 pounds empty. Yeah,  it's I can't believe how heavy it is. It's crazy.  So we have like 10 minutes left and  I want to know whether you go and

21:23
find the stuff you want to sell in your store or if people just bring it to you and they're like, can you sell this?

21:32
A little bit of  little bit of both on the way our structure is set up is I have vendors  which I've got one husband and wife couple where they go out  and they procure their own  items and they bring them in and they rent space. So they have like we have the farmhouse has a porch has a side porch a very long side porch. It's like wall to wall windows. It's probably one of my favorite spaces in the building.

22:01
And they go out and procure their items. get them at estate sales, yard sales, sometimes Facebook Marketplace, can find things wherever they can find their items. And they kind of do the same thing. They will refurbish the furniture.  And they're always on the lookout for like unique items. So they bring their items in and they

22:29
set them up in their space and then how we're and I have vendors throughout the building.  And they pay rent  and a small commission.  I don't make any money off of my vendors. The money that I make is from the items that I refurbish and I sell.  But they my vendors all pay rent  and the rent pays the house rent and then the  small commission goes towards  operating expenses, know, the electric.

22:59
Insurance  credit card fees that kind of thing. So  and everybody has their own little  style. So it's a really nice eclectic  unique mix  of  vintage items hand a lot of handmade items  carefully procured items throughout the building.  And I think that with you know and then when you come into the building and you want to you want to visit I can

23:29
regular customers that just pop in and they're like, hey, I just want you to say hi. And then I get people that say, hey, I just wanted to grab a cup of coffee because I have a coffee station here. I have free coffee. have free hot tea and free bottle water. So it's just the whole I come from a customer service background with banking. That's what I did for like almost 30 years was customer service. And I wanted the building to just give you a big warm

23:58
hug as soon as you walk in. We've got a wood stove that's operational.  You know, we have the chimney people come out and check and it's fine. It's absolutely fine. It's a  really nice wood stove. So in the winter we have the wood stove going. People come in, they're like, oh,  ah, it's like a whole big conversation,  you know, around the wood stove. And then I'm like, hey, fix yourself a cup of coffee, grab some coffee, grab some hot tea, bottle of water, you know, and I just want that immersive

24:28
big warm hug, you know, when people come in the building and that's, you know, probably why we've been voted the best downstate gift shop in Delaware for the last five years. there's a local magazine called Delaware Today. they every year, I don't know how many years they've been doing it probably since inception, but they do, they put it out to the people.

24:57
And they say, we want you to vote. We want you to vote for your favorite restaurant, your favorite nail salon, your favorite hair salon, your favorite store. And it's, up to the people. So the people will go in and they vote  for who they want to win. for the last. Well, we've been here for six years. We won  our first year, didn't win at the second year, but have won it every year since. So.

25:25
I just think that big warm hug is one of the reasons and our really super cool merchandise because we've got really nice stuff.  It just, you know, that's why we get voted  best downstate gift shop and what keeps coming people coming back.  And keeps you wanting to do it. So that's awesome.  Yeah. So my,  my last question, I guess, probably not. There will be another one, but we're going to say it's my last question.

25:54
When people come in and they see something that reminds them of a grandparent or a great grandparent,  do you get to hear their stories? Are they like, oh my God, my grandma had this thing and sitting in front of them? Yeah.  A lot of times  I do hear that.  A lot of ladies will come through and say, oh my gosh, I had that when I was a kid. Like I just picked up at an auction this weekend.  You may remember.

26:22
Some of the people out there will probably remember, and I think they still make the cootie game where you had to like roll the dice and put the little cootie bugs together. Well, I got one. It's a vintage one. So I just picked that up and  we open on Friday. So I'll be putting that out on the floor today or tomorrow. And I'm just waiting to hear somebody like,  oh, I used to play with that because honestly, it was one of my favorite games growing up because I was, like I said, a feral child. I was always dragging home.

26:52
snakes and bugs and injured animals and just all kinds of stuff. So the cootie game was always one of my favorites.  Yeah, we've got that.  people that come in looking for older kitchen utensils,  they say, oh, I've been looking for one of these.  the things that are making a comeback are like  juice, like the glass juicers for like orange juice or lemon juice.

27:23
glass refrigerator  containers. So  they have been selling  because people are looking to get away from the plastics and all that. So they're looking for that. And of course, the pyrex stuff is hot. But I don't get a lot of that because I don't have a vendor. don't have any vendors that like that's their lane. Like every once in while I'll get I'll get a couple pieces, you know, of jadeite that's, you know, that's  beautiful and it's usable.

27:52
and get pieces of Fire King and Pyrex and things like that. All that hot, catchy stuff right now.  And  we've got a couple of quilts,  handmade quilts. I got one that's the fabrics from the  40s.  And then just,  I've got a lot of cookbooks,  which I think homesteaders are really keen on.

28:17
Cookbooks,  but a of them are local. So a lot of them are like regional and because we live in the, in the peninsula of Delaware,  Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, there's a lot of like,  get a lot of seafood,  um, recipes and,  um,  local fare like out here, Scrapple. don't know if you ever heard of it out there, but Scrapple here is like, have, yes. Yep. A staple. It's like a Delaware staple.  Um, I

28:47
And there's a couple of local places that make it.  think I might have one book that's got a recipe for like German Scrapple, but I'm like,  now I'll buy mine already made. Yeah, recipe books and  pictures. Like there's lots of things that like trigger nostalgia for a lot of my customers. Yeah.

29:13
Okay, actually that wasn't my last question, but this one is, because we're rolling toward 30 minutes. What's your favorite thing that you've ever seen in your store that came in?

29:26
Ah.

29:30
Or most surprising, I guess.  I got a piece of furniture in that we... This was probably about two years ago.  Yeah, I would say he's probably, and I call him a he because I gave him a name.  We were looking at an online auction that was a farm out in Maryland.

30:00
there was this piece of furniture in there literally in the barn just  covered with dirt and dust and muck and  yeah.  And we bid on it  and I think we paid like $5 for it.  But  you could not gauge the size of this piece of furniture until you got there and we got there and it was huge.

30:29
Absolutely  huge. we're like, okay, so we got it loaded up, we  brought it back to the farmhouse.  And we have a little barn that's out here.  Our barn is not to get off tangent, but our barn here  is sort of like an iconic staple in Delaware, where the barn is painted red, white and blue and has stars on it. And it's been in

30:57
magazines and  country life magazine. posted a picture. They were asking for people pictures of their barn and country life magazine  picked it up and they're like, oh, on our Facebook page and they're like, oh, we love it. But we get people that stop, take pictures. They want their prom pictures taken car pictures. They want their car pictures taken in front of it, but it's just a little barn. It's painted red, white and blue and it has stars on it. So,  but it also  doubles as our shop.

31:26
So we brought the piece of furniture home, put it out by the barn, and  we started taking it apart  and  learned that it was probably every bit of 250 years old, just from the wood, the construction, the nails, like everything.  We  had to take it apart to fix a couple of little things. And then  he sort of took on his own personality. I know people, there's a lot of people out there that don't like painted furniture, but.

31:55
some things have to be painted because it's just the amount of repair work that you have to do. You've got to camouflage it a little bit. But it was a very, very  light coat of paint.  And it was, it was big. And I brought him in and I gave him a name and I named him Merta because I'm a huge fan of Outlander and I'm like, everybody needs a Merta. So  I  brought him in and a lady drove three hours to buy him.

32:22
And  she had been looking and looking and looking and looking for a piece of furniture that was that size. And we were fortunate enough, you know, sometimes it's a gamble. You bring something in, you think it's going to sell in a hot minute and it sits there and it doesn't. But  Merta found a new home in Pennsylvania and he was just,  it was probably one of my favorite pieces that I've worked on because it was absolutely gorgeous. So what was it? What was the furniture?

32:51
Oh, I'm sorry. It was  like a buffet. It was like huge buffet.  I had to replace the knobs on it  and I used these like  root beer colored  amber glass knobs that I replaced it with and I gave him  like a black  paint wash so it had a very  old world tavern look to him.

33:20
and we were gonna paint the top and the top had a crack going right down the middle. And when we sanded it all down, you know, I was like, I don't know. I left the crack because I loved it. And all I did was just put a clear coat, a clear coat on it. And it just, it all came together. Everything came together. But he had a big long drawer in the front. No, three drawers in the front. It was all curvy and he had like drawers and doors and it was, was.

33:49
It was a big piece of I just,  organically, he just turned out so handsome. Just, I just, it's probably to date one of my very favorites.  I'm so glad you had a favorite because I was afraid you're going be like, I can't choose. That's like choosing my favorite child.  So, all right, Diana, I'm so glad you came to talk to me because this was really fun. love.

34:16
I love old fashioned stuff and I don't really get to talk about it very often. So this was a joy. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Well, thanks for reaching out. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Take care. Bye.