Here are a couple of pics I thought everyone could enjoy. These would be great for a landscape wall quilt. We had a HUGE wall mural of the grist mill in our last place. It was in the fall, though. This is the Glade Creek Grist Mill at Babcock State Park in WV.
The other is a little camp or building a few miles from our house on a
Game Refuge.
Enjoy!

This is just too cool. I have been cataloging the patterns left me by my grndmother Musick and in it is a pattern for a grist mill like you have pictured...Was thinking how wonderful to use as an applique! Like minds????

Very nice and I'm working on the Falls now. :)

I live in upstate NY and not far from me is a mill very similar to that one. They make me feel like i want to go back in time

Going "back in time" would suit me fine so long as there's inside plumbing, electricity,and room for my sewing machines, iron, computer, microwave, big screen tv, stereo and the like! :D :) I'm spoiled and proud of it. I think of my grandmother canning on a wood stove in hot, humid, sticky mid-west weather using water brought in a bucket from the spring 100 yards behind the house and I think wow! those pioneer women sure had some GRIT and they deserve all my admiration but I like all our modern conveniences, thank you very much!
Feathers

In 73 & 74 I lives in a small cabin in the Berkshires, the well was just outside the door had the outhouse a liitle bit away on the left side of cabin.

Had a big wood stove the was always going with a large troth on it for hot water and a huge wood pile and my very own axe.

Also had a beauitful fieldstone fireplace in the winter we would pull the matress around the fireplace at night to sleep

It was a very stress free life I'd do it again maybe get a generator so could have ele for 3 hours a day so I could sew

We did not have electricity until I was 7 and I'm not that old but we lived in the boonies. lol I used to do my homework by coal oil lantern. I remember my Dad wiring the house.

Ceanna:
The description of your 70's home in the Berkshires sounds like an elk hunting cabin we used to go to every fall for 2 weeks. We LOVED the cabin with the wood stove, 50 yard "dash" to what the guys called the "sh__er" and us women called the "2 holer." We brought our water in by bucket from the spring, warmed water to do dishes and do personal clean ups and had a battery with a string of 3 or 4 light bulbs that we used ONLY a few minutes at night. We had a blast and enjoyed every second of our time there ....all 22 of us in a 100+ year old cabin that measured 20 x 20 with a loft on each side of the great room...but we KNEW we were there by choice and only for a week or two. As I said, going back in time is romantic (your mattress in front of the fireplace all cuddled up with your honey) but it's not for me for the long haul. Too arthritic, too old, too set in my comfy home!. Feathers :? :twisted:

It was a great place for the kids they could go outside and play and had no worries. Once a week went to the inlaws and did laundry. Bathtime was something else had a large plastic garbage pail would put water and then the kids one at a time. Sure save on water to be hauled and heated.

The boys (8 and 9, first husbands sons) did there homework by oil lamps Trisha was only a year old. I now have all the convience but still prefere alot of things the old way.

I love the pictures, but I am sorry, girls, my idea of roughing it would be being away from my stash. I was born and raised in the city, never used an outhouse, except at scout camp. Although the pictures have a romantic quality, the idea of actually living back then does not appeal to me. :lol: I may attempt to reproduce one in fabric as they are lovely.

I agree, I like modern conveniences. . . but do wish life could be more quiet and peaceful.

My Dad's Mom came from a big family, (10 kids to maturity). After witnessing us five kids calling dibs on the toilet on our way home, she told us in her family growing up they tried to not be among the first to the outhouse. They'd rather sit their precious fannie's on a warm seat- not a freezing cold one!

Don't even get me started on outhouses! As a 6 year old I got locked in one and I was pretty sure I would die before someone found me! :cry: I'm in my 60's now and would rather piddle behind a bush than use an outhouse! :x :roll:
Feathers

Outhouse, inhouse, or a bush....all the same to me....when ya' gotta, ya gotta! :lol: I prefer the mixed version, all the idealistic nostalgia, with the modern convenience...and a great big quilting room!

Amen, Sister!

Man, I really started something this time! LOL!
When I was born, and until the summer I was 3.5, we lived in a 10 foot wide trailer with no running water. There was a well that Mom carried all of our water from. The toilet/outhouse was probably 150 or more feet away, and through a gate/fence where the cow was.
Mom had an old ringer washer outside she did laundry in with rain water and a line to dry them on. Mostly, we had to go to the laundry mat.
I got a bath in an inch more or less of water...or in the sink in a big orange dish pan. :D
Mom would carry a bucket of water up to the trailer several times a day and put a little in the tub and use the rest for cleaning and things...the stopper in the tub was not functional, so she stuffed a wash cloth in the hole....and sometimes I would take it out! She'd have to go fetch more water for the bathtime that way! Of course, she always heated up some hot water and added to the tub before the bath.
We were dirt-poor! I remember some of it.
I'm SO glad I don't have to live like that with kids! I know how hard it is to take care of them with water and all the modern things. I can't imagine how hard Mom's job was.
BUT...her childhood was way, way, way more UN-Modern than the first 3.5 of mine.
Mom says she doesn't like to camp now. She camped for 3.5 years with me. She says, really, all she had was electric. Most campers/Travel Trailers are way nicer than what we had back then....
oh, the good ole days!
:D

Buttercream:
Are we related? All that you described I remember exactly how we lived, too until I was about 5 years old. My mom had a wringer washing machine until I was about 10 or 12. I remember mom hanging clothes on the line in the winter time and telling us NOT to touch the clothes or bend them because they would break because they were frozen stiff. We always had plenty to eat but didn't have many material things until later.

Feathers

Feathers!~could be!?
My Mom has 5 brothers and 5 sisters. She was the youngest daughter. They about starved to death as kids.
She says she remembers not having hardly anything to eat even while pregnant with me. Dad worked, it was just hard times then. She said they didn't even have a jar of coffee. :(
But...YOU KNOW WHAT!!??!!
It's all fine and dandy. Hard times bring out the best in us.
This was in the 1980's, by the way....
and...I want to say that I don't regret a thing. I think it makes us more creative to work with what we have. I love knowing that I could make it if I would have to! (A country girl can survive!--Thank you, Hank!)
:lol:

I was born at Grandma's house in the hills, and when my Mother moved to Ohio with Dad and kept on having kids, she gae me the best gift of all, letting me live with Grandma and Grandpa till he died. Living in the hills we were poor but I didn't know it because everyone else was too. We had a cow and a pig and chickens, could go out and shoot anything that we could find for extra meat, all the while during the depression in big cities people were fighting to get to soup kitchens for free food.

Looking back, going to the little house out back wasn't that bad since we each had a thunder mug under each bed. (You had to clean up your own if you were old enough).
And with running water, you ran out and pulled it up from the well, except for a cow tail pump in the kitchen that had to have water poured into it to get it to give up lots more from deep in the earth. Sleeping in a cold attic or spare room with corncob mattress that crinkled at every breath, and covered with heavy, warm quilts made from old woolen clothes made you feel warm and cozy with the wind hurling rain and sleet against the windows. Grabbing clothes and pulling them on while running for the warm kitchen to finish dressing because most of the house wasn't that well insulated. (Come to think of it, I never even heard the word=insulation= till I was in my 20s!!

No, I wouldn't gripe too much at that sort of life, but I do love my computer and electric sewing machines and fridge and freezer, and lights to read by. Guess I'm too old to change, don't even want to go camping any more, even though we did that with kids all our married life.