House Tour

“We didn’t just buy two-hundred and forty-five acres when we bought Connemara, we bought a million acres of sky, too!”

Sandburg was heard saying this as he stood on the porch of his new home in Flat Rock, NC, surveying the splendid vista (Steichen, p101).  The family moved south in 1945 as the Michigan winters were wearing on Paula Sandburg and the sandy lakeshore provided little pasture for a goat herd.  What they found at Connemara was a writer’s sanctuary and a working farm.

As you tour the house you will note that the Sandburg family lived casually.  Over the years they had their share of guests, buy they made no pretenses at formal living.  Simplicity was the rule as indicated by the functional furnishings.

Sandburg had shared this philosophy for a simple life with his soon-to-be wife Lilian in a 1908 letter, “All the big people are simple, as simple as the unexplored wilderness.  They love the universal things that are free to everybody.  Light and air and food and love and some work are enough.  In the varying phases of these cheap and common things, the great lives have found their joy.”

Connemara provided them all these things; mountain air, gardens and orchards full of vegetables and fruit, plenty of work, and the love of a family.