Sandburg Home Porch

Sandburg Home Porch

NPS Photo

Carl Sandburg and his wife Lilian "Paula", stood on the porch of their new home in Flat Rock, NC, and declared, "We didn’t just buy two-hundred and forty-five acres when we bought Connemara, we bought a million acres of sky!" They also found at Connemara a writer’s sanctuary and the perfect farm for dairy goats.

As you tour the house you will note that the Sandburg family lived casually.  Simplicity was the rule as indicated by the functional furnishings.

Sandburg followed this philosophy throughout his life, having written to his soon-to-be wife Lilian in 1908, “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.