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FeedA Walk through Time
By Jack Gordon
Photo by Dana Wheelock
Less visible are the eight or nine other structures inland from the barn—the granary, the machine shed, the big workshop with attached greenhouse, various sheds and garages, and the farmhouse. The house incorporates the original two-room log cabin built in 1876 by Jonas Anderson, great-grandfather of current resident and steward Don Josephson.
Don and Joanne Josephson don’t just live with history, they live in it. They are surrounded by it. When they get the urge they can even drive it.
“The place is like one big museum,” says Don, 68. “Old uncle never got rid of anything. It was annoying at the time. It’s a blessing now.”
“Old uncle” was homesteader Jonas Anderson’s son, George, who operated the dairy farm until 1959. Don Josephson, then a senior at Penn State University, came back to help milk the last cows. His father, Donald, a professor at Penn State, took over the property in 1970 and retired there in 1975. When Don himself retired in 2003 after selling his Chicagoland business, there was no question where he and Joanne would go.
PACKRAT TREASURES
Thanks to old uncle’s packrat ways, Josephson is the proud owner of a 1929 four-door Model A Ford bought new by his great-grandmother. “Runs like a top,” he says.When it comes to driving history, however, Josephson’s real pride and joy is great-grandfather Jonas’s 1916 Reo touring car. The Reo, a brand made by Oldsmobile founder Ransom E. Olds, was driven for only three years (and 4,100 miles) before Jonas died in a 1919 flu epidemic. It sat in a shed on the property until 2002, when Josephson had it restored—or “preserved,” as the craftsman hired for the job insisted.
The outbuildings hold additional treasures. In the machine shed lies a wooden sleigh that could pass for Santa’s. Also tucked inside are no fewer than three horse-drawn buggies, two of them hanging from the rafters.
Josephson could keep this up all day, going from building to building, telling stories about old uncle’s stashed stuff. Over here in the barn we find a wood-and-iron gizmo with a hand-crank wheel, about 4 feet tall, that Josephson identifies as a cream separator. Next to it stands a red wagon that turns out to be a Minnesota manure spreader. Minnesota brand farm equipment, he explains, was made “until about the late 1950s” by prisoners at the nearby Stillwater penitentiary. As for the sizeable stack of hay in the mow on the barn’s upper level, it has rested there virtually untouched since 1959.
A CENTURY OF REMODELS
The house itself is a walk through time and family history, beginning with the cabin built in 1876. In the 1890s a two-story addition was attached to the south side of it, and a detached summer kitchen for warm-weather cooking was added on the north side. Eighty years later, in 1976, Josephson’s father added a second story above the original cabin.In 2002, working with architect Tod Drescher of Marine on St. Croix, the Josephsons converted the summer kitchen into a spa-like
bathroom with a steam shower—its floor inlaid with sliced Minnesota lakeshore stones—a soaking tub, and a sauna, and attached it to the original cabin with a new breezeway. They expanded a cedar deck, making room for a hot tub next to the sauna. The following year, they created a spacious new kitchen and dining area on the first level, with floors of reclaimed pine that extend to the entry and living room.
Last year two small bedrooms upstairs became a single owners’ suite that features an expanse of windows overlooking the bucolic scene that unfolds down to the lake. A comfortable office/family room with wide beadboard ceiling and custom cabinetry now occupies much of the formerly unfinished basement. A geothermal heating and cooling system, installed in 2005, now adds a twenty-first century energy source to the nineteenth-century homestead.
The remodeling binge began because “the kitchen needed updating,” says Joanne. “Then she and Tod sat down,” adds Don, “and things started getting expensive.”
Whatever the cost, the results are stunning, not least because the Josephsons kept reaching into old uncle’s stockpile for historical touches to complement the new additions. The kitchen, for instance, is strikingly modern, with dramatic red walls and black granite countertops. But grandmother’s wood cooking stove, now used for storage, has a place of honor. And the handles on the refrigerator doors are wooden hames—the pieces of draft-animal harnesses to which traces attach.
Another cast-iron, wood-burning stove occupies a central spot in the sauna, though a less conspicuous electric heater does the actual work. Hanging on a wall between the sauna and steam shower are a horse collar and a wooden gadget that Josephson explains is a corn planter. The downstairs office boasts a wooden RCA farm radio that he found in a shed and restored to working order.
So the project went in room after room, says architect Drescher: “Don would go into one of the buildings and come out with a door and a great old doorknob,” and that would become the door to the new spa.
The Josephsons represent the fourth generation of Jonas Anderson’s descendents to live on the property. At least one of Josephson’s two daughters plans to retire there as well. And the four grandchildren love the place, suggesting that it will remain in the family for generations to come. All anyone will have to do to read its history is take a look around.
JACK GORDON IS AN EDEN PRAIRIE WRITER.
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