Summer Kitchen?

There is an Amish family here with a buggy barn built right at the back dooor outside the kitchen. thier house is on a raised foundation and the barn isnt so they step down into the barn. That is where they have thier cookstove.. I have been there during the summer while the oven was going and it wasnt hot at all...but they can have the barn doors open too... They have a big wrap around porch that keeps the whole house cool....

We just converted a wood shop into a canning kitchen.
It aready had a wood trash burner in it, so we panted the walls and put down lenoleum squares on the floors. the old work benches have formica tops now and we added shelves for canning jars and a small freezer for processing frozen veggies.
We also have a 3 burner propane stove for using the pressure canner. The trash burner is only used for heating water, but I've cooked on it a few times.
In one corner we put in a counter top with 2 double sized sinks for washing veggies. the water comes in through a hose and goes out to water the garden.
The door is a double wide and the window has a huge fan to take the heat out of the room. It is about 15 x 15 foot, and I have a small table on wheels for moving batches of jars from one side of the room to another or for sitting down for snapping beans or what ever.
Be sure to allow lots of counter space for cutting veggies, and having batches jars ready to fill. Or having multiple projects going at once.
For me it was like not canning at all last year, becuse I didn't have to sit in an over heated house for the rest of the day, like before.

The Amish farm we are hoping to buy has one attached to the regular kitchen. In summer it's a kitchen, in the winter it's a mud room. Works great!

When we were looking for our farm, we looked at 2 houses with summer kitchens and 1 where the summer kitchen had been removed.

One house was on a hill with a basement that had a walk-out addition. There was a complete kitchen with running hot & cold water, two stoves (1 gas and 1 wood), side-by-side refrigerator/freezer and large walk-in pantry & storage in the addition. It had lots of cross ventilation windows. The homeowner was advertising that the lower level could be used as an in-law suite.

The second house had a separate kitchen in a small building about 25 or 30 feet behind the house. It was built and decorated like an adult-sized Wendy house and only contained a kitchen and storage room. But thr kitchen had running water, professional stove, ovens and refrigerator and freezers. This kitchen had been inspected so she could use it for her bakery & dairy business.

A large deck replaced the summer kitchen that had been removed. The house had been in the same family for over 150 years, so we were lucky enough to see pictures taken in 1920's of the old summer kitchen. It was fully screened and had a huge wood cookstove that looked like it shared the chimney with the woodstove in the dining room. There was a large work surface on two walls and lots of shelves for jars and crocks.


We have a large kitchen and walk-in pantry located next to a large mud/laundry room. Luckily, we have a very large window in the kitchen, large patio doors in the mud/laundry room, and lots of windows in the rest of the house for cross ventilation. We don't have a wood cookstove, but with the windows open and ceiling fans on, even baking or canning in August is not a daunting task.

The wife wanted a sewing room and a place to do her fiber thing so she set down and drew up plans for her dream place. She sawed it out and I nailed it together. It has a 24x24 room with 7 comercial sinks, stove built in cabinets, two pantry closets for canning jars empty and filled that we call the summer kitchen, a 24x24 studio where her looms, spinningwheels , sewing machines and both our computers are. I do my carving in that room and thats where we watch TV. There is a 20x24 sun room where she starts the plants for the gardens and it all is in a L shape with 8 foot pocket doors that roll back into the walls so you can open up all three rooms when we are having meetings, partys or teaching classes.
The whole thing is seperate from the house but does have a 3/4 bath. The one piece 8 foot long sink in one end is ideal for dressing deer, and it is great for canning and not heating up the house. We ususally can about 350 cans of vegetables and about 100 of chicken, deer and beef.

Hi! I have an old wood cook stove in the shed too, but it's not in great shape, so I only want to use it outside. I want to build a thing like my grandparents had on their lake property, it was a concrete pad with a roof, on one end was a cinderblock fireplace with a sheet metal top. I'd like to have some sort of bread oven thing, and set up the woodstove. And a set up for the smoker(make a better smoker...).

Right now I'm digging a new firepit in the "back yard", I'm leveling the area, making flower beds, edging with rocks, diggin out blackberry vines.

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