Turning a barn into a “Summer Kitchen”
A French farmhouse & co-stewardship post
A brief overview of our French farmhouse situation:
During the pandemic, our family purchased a little old farmhouse (sight unseen!) in the Aveyron region of France with our nearest and dearest friends. The home measures under 800 square feet and is suitable to live in for part of the year, but it needs a fair amount of restoration before it can comfortably accommodate full-time occupants. We are slowly chipping away at essential repairs and updates within the residence as our tight budget allows, and one day we hope to adapt some of the outbuildings as well. There are 5 adults and 4 young children in our group. Three of us have known each other for almost 30 years, and we’ve visited this area of France for work for nearly 20 years. We do not use the property as a vacation rental or timeshare — it is a forever home in progress. (In other words, this is my retirement plan, so it’d better work out.) When we’re not at the farmhouse, my family lives in a guest cottage in the Southeastern US next to my folks.
I often pop into the public library to visit my husband at work. Despite having a fairly narrow set of skills in the kitchen and garden, I usually gravitate towards the culinary and horticulture sections of the library, marveling at all the wonderful growing and cooking I’ve yet to try. While navigating around a cart in one of my go-to aisles, my eyes fell upon Summer Kitchens by Olia Hercules, which I checked out twice in a row before finally buying a copy for our home. Not only did the book inspire me to make puffed omelettes nearly every morning for months, but it helped me imagine greater possibilities for the barn at our farmhouse.
Summer kitchens are compact, freestanding structures in Ukrainian vegetable gardens where folks prep, cook, preserve and enjoy the food they’ve grown during the warmer months. (These little buildings still exist, but in dwindling numbers.)
Small space devotees will likely find beauty and inspiration in summer kitchens, which must be incredibly practical for modest homes with many of occupants who could quickly overwhelm such a tight, utilitarian, essential zone.
More importantly, however, summer kitchens seem to be uniquely designed for optimal stewardship of the land on which they sit.
“… it seems to me that the underlying intention is to try and live in harmony with nature, with gratitude to the land and what it gives you. Summer kitchens encourage a very intimate, almost spiritual reconnection to everything living around you.”
- Summer Kitchens by Olia Hercules
One of the four large sections of our barn — the lower, enclosed portion — seems to be uniquely suited to serve similar functions as a summer kitchen.
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