Farmhouse Patent Art and Free Printables

2 Materials
$5
10 Minutes
Easy
The Farmhouse bandwagon is still running at full speed, as far as I can tell. And, hey, when the bandwagon is running, you better jump on board from time to time, right? So let’s hear it for Farmhouse!

FARMHOUSE! FARMHOUSE!
RAH RAH FARMHOUSE!

You know, now that I think about it, I’m not really jumping on any bandwagons, and I’m not really all that full of crap (though Handan may disagree). I actually worked on a farm here in Glastonbury, Connecticut when I was a kid. I’d say that gives me more Farmhouse cred than most people blathering on about it these days!

Okay look, I wasn’t out there milkin’ cows or collectin’ eggs or forkin’ hay or anything like that. But I was picking tobacco and driving old tractors and climbing around in the rafters of old barns. In the mornings, we used to pick tomatoes for an hour before heading over to the tobacco fields. Man, I hated that. Not only did it require constant and repeated bending (Ken Horton grew his tomatoes on the ground, not up on trellises), but afterwards, my hands reeked of tomato stem – a smell I can’t stand to this day. Just ask Handan – whenever we’re out working with our tomato plants, I whine like a three-year-old about those smelly stems. But those Horton tomatoes were excellent. We’d eat them like apples, straight from the bush. And that’s the other problem with those summer mornings spent bent over like an old crone: those tomatoes were so dang good that they ruined all other tomatoes for me! Unless they are farm-fresh and perfectly ripe, I won’t touch them. Working at the farm had turned me into a tomato snob, lol!

Now here’s the thing about Farmhouse: it’s all about making your house look like it just popped out of 1931. Except for the kitchen appliances. Gotta have that fancy range and a refrigerator that knows more than you do. You know the one that monitors your inventory and fires off an order to Amazon whenever your free-range eggs, organic skim milk, Yoplait and gluten-free, sugar-free, fat-free snacky cakes dip below critical thresholds? Yeah, that one. Here’s the real question, though – do any actual farmers live in houses decorated in the current Farmhouse style? Or do they look at all of this faux-farmy stuff and just shake their heads and wish they actually had time to decorate?

If you’re a real farmer, please let me know in the comments.

Well, either way, we’re going for Farmhouse, and what better way to capture that vintage charm, than with prints of old farm patents? It’s genius! Let’s get to ’em!

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We are giving you 6 Farmhouse Patent Art printables in two sizes (16 x 20 inches and 24 x 36 inches) and with three different backgrounds (aged parchment, ivory parchment and chalkboard). As a bonus, we're also giving away 6 Olive Branch botanical printables (again in 2 sizes and three backgrounds) and a really cool Phonetic Alphabet printable in two sizes (30 x 60 inches and 30 x 72 inches)

You can’t have a respectable farm without a tractor, right? Wellllll, then you can’t have a Farmhouse without one of these tractor prints!
That reminds me of Horton’s Farm. There were two tractors that I recall. One was a blue Ford from the 1980s that was probably a direct descendant of the one pictured above. The other was a red International Harvester Farmall from the 1940s. It had two huge back wheels and two tiny front wheels. A three-foot exhaust pipe (I called it a smokestack) protruded from the engine hood.


When we harvested the tobacco, we’d sometimes find tobacco worms – great big green things with horned heads. We would collect a few and dump them into the Farmall’s smokestack while the tractor sat idling. After the worms had cooked for a few minutes, one of us would grab the throttle lever and yank it open all the way. The engine would roar to life and the smokestack would belch a great gout of smoke through which the tobacco worms hurtled like tiny green Apollo astronauts on a doomed moonshot.


We had a lot of fun on the farm, but launching tobacco worms still holds a special place in my heart.


I only wish there were a silo on that farm. I feel like silos offer so many excellent opportunities for a rotten kid to get in trouble. Oh well. I’ll have to settle for this awesome vintage patent print of a silo instead.
Am I the only one who thinks about rockets when looking at silos?


Though Horton’s Farm wasn’t an animal farm, there were a few small ones in town when I was a kid. I remember I milked a cow once. I think it was at my friend’s grandparents’ farm that sits only a couple of miles from where I sit typing this post. Two notable things happened during that farm visit: I milked a cow, and I nearly decapitated myself on a barbed wire fence while riding one of their all terrain vehicles around the fields. But that’s a different story. Let’s get back to the cow. If you’ve never milked one, I highly recommend it. There’s nothing like really fresh milk!
Of course, I didn’t use some fancy-pants “cow milker.” I did the job with my fingers, much to the cow’s dismay, I’m sure.


You know, if you look at any photo or painting of an old farmhouse, there are two things you’re pretty much guaranteed to see: a barn and a windmill. I think windmills are neat, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a real one up close. I mean a real one that was actually converting the wind’s energy into useful work like pumping well-water or irrigation. Mostly people just have them for show these days – just another flying projectile for the next tornado.
I remember as a kid hearing awful stories about guys getting various body parts caught in big agricultural farming machines and the resulting carnage. I looked upon those big machines with awe and fear. But without those terrifying arm-eaters, we’d still be out walking through endless fields with sickles and flails, thinking to ourselves, “Good god this is boring! There must be a better way!”
We didn’t have threshers at Horton’s Farm. We harvested the tobacco plants with small hatchets that had been used since the family bought the land back in 1860. Once we harvested the tobacco leaves – it was broadleaf tobacco, and the leaves were used for cigar wrappers – we hung them in a big drying shed where they would stay until they were shipped off to a middleman who would further cure and age the leaves before selling them to cigar makers in Cuba and The Dominican Republic.


This last patent reminds me of those drying sheds on Horton’s Farm, though they were much bigger!
A few of us kids were standing around in front of one of the drying sheds early one morning before the work began. It was a cool morning, and the dew had fallen overnight, covering the grass with water droplets. One of the kids spotted a tobacco leaf on the ground filled with an ounce or two of clear liquid.


“Ooooh!” He said and ran over to pick up the leaf, careful not to spill any precious morning dew. “Taste the nature!” He exclaimed before raising the leaf to his lip and giving a mighty slurp. His face immediately contorted, and he spat the liquid to the ground.


“BLECH! Chemicals!” He shouted, wiping his mouth on his arm, as we all whooped and hollered and laughed at his misfortune.


Even the simple farm life had its perils. I think he learned a valuable lesson that day.


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Okay, on to the bonus printables!


The first lot is the vintage olive branch printables. Handan loves these olive branch illustrations, in fact she loves all things Mediterranean, as they remind her of Izmir and Antalya in Turkey.
The second bonus printable is a phonetic alphabet – Morse code wall art. Note that one of the files can be printed BIG – like 6-feet-tall big! It would look awesome in a man cave.
Now it's time to hop on over to our blog (if you haven't done so already) to get your free printables and instructions on how to get them printed really big and really cheap! Just click the link below and enjoy your free printables!


Thanks for reading!


-Greg
Suggested materials:
  • Paper
  • Frame
Handan & Greg @ The Navage Patch
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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 2 comments
  • Phyllis Rodgers Phyllis Rodgers on May 31, 2021

    I love the printables, but your writing was delightful! Put a big smile on this authentic farm girl’s face this morning!

  • Syntha Syntha on Jan 16, 2023

    When I was actively farming and was also the farmer's wife, we did NOT have the cutesy farm house like looking pictures, white painted furniture etc. Who had time to decorate like that AND take care of it, when you had cows to milk, hay to put up, corn to chop, horses to ride, etc. We had approximately 80 cows to milk, calves to care for and so on. I lived in a 3 storied brick home, built in 1776. It was updated and comfortable, but not fancy. Raised three kids on our farms and we had a blast. Our young farmer friends homes were similar to our house with nothing fancy in them, either. So from my farm experience I do shake my head at the decorations and smile. It is nice and pretty to look at but not so practical in real life. I am not saying all farmers were like us, some of the farmers and farms came from old money and the wives didn't work the farm besides their husbands like I did, so their homes were fancier.


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