Terrain Items - A Summer Kitchen & Dairy

From Pensylvania Historical & Museum Commission: "The summer kitchen is a rectangular, one-to-two-story, usually gable-roofed structure that is closely related to the main house. Sometimes it is a wing, but usually it is semi-detached or completely detached. As its name implies, the summer kitchen housed cooking facilities for the hot, heavy processing work of the high season. Sometimes, farm families also ate their warm weather meals in the summer kitchen. Its characteristic features include: a rectangular footprint, about 150-250 square feet; chimney or stovepipe; windows in both the gable ends and eaves sides; human doors in either the gable end or the eaves side; and a relatively high degree of finish for an outbuilding. Sometimes a built-in interior set-kettle occupies one end of the structure. Frame is the most common material, but summer kitchens are also built with brick, log, and stone. In some cases, a cupola with dinner bell adorns the roof ridge." (http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/agriculture/field-guide/summer-kitchen.html)

Colonial Williamsburg notes that the earlier homes featured basement kitchens. But this changed around 1720. "And then something changed. Hugh Jones, a William and Mary mathematics teacher, is an early witness to the altered state of kitchens. Surveying the colony in 1724 in his Present State of Virginia, Jones says that common planters often keep their "kitchen apart from the dwelling house, because of the smell of victuals, offensive in hot weather." He doesn't mention the threat of fire."

Most of these kitchens were vernacular log structures chinked with clay, according to Colonial Williamsburg architectural historian Willie Graham. "Most of those don't survive," Graham says. "It's mainly high-end plantations where we still see the separate kitchen." (https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Summer07/kitchens.cfm) In terms of dairies, it seems that it would be determined based on the size of the farm/plantation if one existed. The work of butter churning and cheese making could be accomplished within the house in many cases rather than requiring a separate building for the work. In Virginia, it seemed to be prevelant during the Colonial period but then slowly disapeared as its original use. But could be present through out the period of the War of Jenkin's Ear and possibly to the Revolution. I have not started work on these yet.

I did get some initial prints done. I will be revising the Ukrainian belfry to match how I printed mine. I had to cut the model into three sections to eliminate supports. I printed the chicken coop and it came out well until I moved it and crushed part of it. I will be working some more on these and post pictures of the printed models and later painted ones.