Summers are the bulk of teachers’ very sacred spare time where they can do whatever they please. For English teacher Kelly Wood, she has taken on an interesting project to occupy her summers. 

“For the last six years, I’ve been remodeling a 150-year-old farmhouse inside out including the landscaping,” Wood said. 

Wood and her husband have improved the farmhouse and made their own lasting touches on the property. 

“We put in a pond where we fish. Over this past month when it was super cold we got to ice skate on the pond and go sledding on the pond,” Wood said, “It’s a great place for family to gather, friends to gather and just enjoy the outdoors.”

The cosmetic wonders of the farmhouse, however, are not the only remarkable trait, as there is a rich history to this land. 

“Our farmhouse was built by the Busch family. It was built in 1891 by Carl and Annie Busch and the mom to Carl. Mrs. Minch kept a journal of all that’s happened on the property since before the Civil War,” Wood said. “Mrs. Minch had taken this diary and [documented] what her family was doing during the Civil War. The women were at home, the children were working on the farm, the men were fighting. She talked about an epidemic that moved through the town in the 1890s. There’s a cemetery on the property as well that dialogues the fact that so many people were killed within a two-week frame of time.”

The farmhouse project will take the Woods a projected 10 years total, but the rewards the process has brought are worth it. 

“It’s not just a simple remodel project. We replaced all the windows in the house, we put in a stone floor in the entryway, we built beds out of gates and iron pieces,” Wood said. “It was major, but it turned out beautiful.”