What I call the Bloomfield farm was about two and a half, three miles northwest of Bloomfield on the gravel road we used between Center and Bloomfield, also the mail route (State 84). Today the asphalt is a mile south, so it's easier to go to the Bloomfield cemetery west of town, drive a mile north, turn left and drive west approximately a mile or a bit more. The third Koftan home was where the country road met the state highway, on the north side. Trees ran along both the south and west edges of the farmstead. They didn't line the lane in, but there was an apple orchard to the west of the lane, between the house and the highway. Catty-cornered from the Koftans was the Gerhard (and Lizzie) Clausen place on the south side of the highway. West of the Koftans on the highway was a little but steep hill, and the farm north of it was the Fisks, so it was Fisk Hill.
The house, the one I remember the most fondly, looked like this. Grandma's date is 1949.
The view is looking straight west, the orchard to the left or south out of sight, the house surrounded by trees. That's a lilac by the front gate. The separator and washing machine sat on the front porch. To the left in the front yard were large ash trees (box elders), one with a tire swing for us. Back of the house were several black walnut trees. To the right is the red outhouse where old catalogs and farm magazines went for ecological reuse.
The unheated upstairs was all bedrooms, the master bedroom, Gramma and Grampa's, to the far left, with the nicest furniture, where we were not supposed to be most of the time. (Actually, there were little-very little--registers that let warm downstairs air rise, but the cookstove and living room stove were off at night.) The two small bedrooms in the middle had a door in the closets, so we generally messed up the clothes going from one to the other while hiding. The bedroom above the dining room was the "guest" bedroom. We could go out the windows on to the top of the porch, but that made Grampa cuss and Gramma yell at us. A large oval portrait of Mom at three hung on the landing, the stairwell at the right rear. The window above the lilac is to the dining room, the central location. Its door, unseen because of being at a right angle at the right-hand end of the front porch, was the main door. The table where everyone gathered was at the northeast corner of the room and house, to the front right here. The door at the left, to the living room, was ordinarily kept closed, seldom used to the extent that sometimes it was locked. At the back of the dining room to the right was the little galley kitchen where Gram made all kinds of food daily with her big range and small sink, and there was a little back porch down two steps, with more steps down to the back on the way to the outdoor toilet.
Taken during the 1948-1949 winter I've mentioned as the worst in my memory, with colossal drifts, when Center had no traffic in or out for two weeks, these photos show the same set of buildings in the northwest corner, as well as Larry Dale, Grandpa K. and Grandma K. at the time. Back of Larry, beyond the row of trees, is the Fisk farm across the county/country road. In those days the countryside supported many farm families and farms were actually very close in "neighborhoods," all gone today in merged properties and corporate farming.
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