The Eidem Homestead Farm Near Brooklyn Park, Minnesota

I am a former Iowa farm boy. Much of my early life was spent on the farm or in small towns that depended on the labor and produce of farmers. Although I have spent time in big cities (such as Des Moines, Iowa, and now the Twin Cities), I feel at home in the rural areas and a little out of place anywhere else. Because of that, it was like going back home again when my wife and I visited the Eidem Homestead Farm located on the north edge of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, at 4345 101st Avenue North (the intersection of Zane and 101st).

The farm was purchased by the city of Brooklyn Park as a way to preserve some history of the past. In 1976, the city, using federal Housing and Urban Development funds, purchased the house and ten acres of land for $40,000. The farm had been in the John Eidem family 82 years. This information and much more about the farm, including pictures, can be found on the Eidem Homestead's excellent website.

The Eidem farm takes the visitor back to the way it was on the farm during 1890-1910. I was born in 1940 and I lived on farms that went back to that period, including the outhouse! I have not-so-fond memories of running to the outhouse at night in winter, clutching the Sears Catalog or whatever catalog served as a not-so-great substitute for toilet tissue, and sitting there wondering if the ghost story I had just heard on the radio was truly fiction or was real. I also remember the threshing days when the neighbors gathered to help out with the work and to eat the tremendous array of food that my mother and some neighboring wives managed to find room for on the table.

The visit to Eidem Farm brought back many memories of a life that for most of us is long gone-a simpler life, in many ways a harder life, but also a satisfying life. Even today's farmers often are caught up in the modern lifestyle with big tractors, big machinery, big RVs, and the kinds of houses people used to see in only the upper class areas of town. The Eidem farm is a reminder that it is possible to enjoy life with less and, perhaps, in the long run to end up with more of the things that make life good.

As my wife and I entered the farm's parking lot, we were struck by the sight of modern houses to the east and the farm to the west-two ways of life sitting side-by-side. A huge garden (which we soon learned was a community garden) caught our eye as we got out of our car, and we asked a woman if it would be all right to walk around in the garden and look at it, since we had arrived a few minutes before the farm was officially open for the day. Not only did she give us her permission; she also gave us a couple of squash, which were newly ripe!

For me, the centerpiece of the farm is the house. If you were to combine the different houses in which I lived during my growing up years, the Eidem farmhouse would be the result. It is furnished, as it would have been in the late 1800s and early 1900s and it has the look and feel of my early homes. I cannot describe what I mean by "feel," except to say that it felt like those homes where I remember lying on the floor beside the furnace on Christmas day reading one of the books I had received, or putting corn cobs in the cook stove to get a fire going in order fix supper, or listening to my favorite programs ("The Shadow," "Front Page Farrell," or "Fibber McGee and Molly") or opening the ice box to get something to eat-although we didn't get our ice from the river or pond; we bought it at the grocery store!

While the house may be the center of life for a farm family, the barn was the center of the farm family's work. To step into the barn at the Eidem farm is to step back to a time when tractors didn't rule the fields and when farm animals were, for most people, more than just pictures on food containers or "entertainers" in TV commercials. There is a look and a smell (!) to a barn that can be unpleasant for city dwellers, but which reminds the farmer and other perceptive people that our very physical existence as human beings is rooted in nature and its products. A windmill completes the lesson.

Children will enjoy feeding the sheep and listening to the costumed interpreters explaining and demonstrating activities from the past. We saw children who may never be on a farm again learning what their grandparents experienced as children. Eidem is not only a visual treat; it is also an educational experience for people of all ages-either to recall their own early years or to marvel at how people were able to live without computers, television sets, or iPods!

There are larger demonstration farms around-Living History Farms near Des Moines comes to mind-but the Eidem Homestead has the advantage of smallness: you can go through it and enjoy it in a relatively short time, and go away, not exhausted, but refreshed. Note: On the day my wife and I visited, the farm was even serving cookies to its guests!

Source: www.brooklynpark.org/sitepages/pid70.php