ABC Wednesday - K is for Kitchen Stove

Here is the kitchen stove at London Heritage Farm in Richmond, BC, that I visited last July. If you missed my post about it, you can see a slide show and read about it here.

The house was built in the 1880s and ladies still bake scones and cookies here to serve in the dining room with their special blend of tea.

It was so cosy in the kitchen with all its aromas and shelves full of jams, jellies, and sauces.

This is the kitchen stove at the Murakami house at Britannia Heritage Shipyard park, built around 1885. You can still see it to this day at this incredible heritage site in Steveston, British Columbia. It's a much more modern version than the one at London Heritage Farm.

This was the home of boat builder Otokishi Murakami, his wife Asayo, and their family until they were evacuated in 1942 to a sugar beet farm in Manitoba. This was the time when all persons of Japanese decent were relocated to the interior of Canada because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

When the house was restored in 1996, their son, George, rebuilt the traditional Japanese cedar bathtub. Their granddaughter, Linda Ohama, chronicled Asayo's life in her movie titled "Obaachan's Garden". The Murakami family helped replant the garden next to the house to commemorate Asayo's love of flowers. Asayo died in December 2002 at the age of 104.

And here is my kitchen stove, which is a far cry from the above two kitchen stoves. I don't have to chop wood to put inside it and it has lots of room for four large pots or pans. The controls are electronic, and the burners are underneath a ceramic top so I can also use it as extra counter space when it's not in use. The oven has regular and convection heating and above the stove is my ultra-modern built-in microwave.

Although the kitchen stoves of the 1880s and the 1940s have a great deal of character, I think I prefer my modern kitchen stove.

Mrs. Nesbitt is our hostess for ABC Wednesdays and if you'd like to contribute or even just view some of the participants' photos and stories, click here.

Oh, and if you'd like to see my Wordless Wednesday post, just click here.