For the dyed-in-asphalt city dweller, the countryside can be unsettling. The quiet is eerie, not peaceful. The night sky isn’t a wonder, just a void. And soil is dirt. But for those of a certain mind, as a character in Chekhov’s Gooseberries remarks, “Country life has its advantages. You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good…”
With horses, a cow, goats, chickens, dogs and cats, Daria and Tomek Sękiewicz’s 17-acre spread in the Polish countryside may not always smell sweet. And with running a small agritourism business (they operate two guest cottages on their property), they’re not kicking back with cups of tea most days. But for them, life on a farm sure beats living in town. “Previously, we lived in the city, in a small apartment in a block of apartments,” says Daria, a veterinary technician. “We lacked contact with nature and animals. We wanted our children to know what a horse, a goat, a hen looks like, what a good egg tastes like and that the milk is from the cow, not from the store.”
Surrounded by forest and streams, the Sękiewicz homestead includes a vegetable garden and over 100 fruit trees — apple, pear and plum. Araucana hens provide fresh eggs, and Daria and Tomek produce cheese from the milk of the resident goats. The house the family lives in was built in 1926 and once served as a destination for tourists visiting the nearby Tatra Mountains. Daria and Tomek moved it to its present location in the small village of Rożnowice and set about giving it a new life. Tomek — a metal engineer by training — gathered a crew to help him situate the structure on its new site, then, with the help of a neighbor, set about installing the plumbing, electrical, and heating. On his own, he laid tiles, created a fireplace, and built stairs.
Made of sturdy spruce, the house possesses a clean workmanlike charm. Furnished with internet and flea market finds, plus pieces Tomek crafted himself (he’s also a fine carpenter), it’s rustic but not at all rough, unpretentious but not plain. The fabric of the home is warmly spun from such details as a millstone — once used by Daria’s grandfather — embedded in the brick above a doorway, old tiles from a manor house that now clad the bread oven, and the reclaimed barn boards that envelop a bathtub. The flooring in one room is made from oak parquet taken from a tenement in Krakow. “It’s from 1935, and each stave is signed with the name of the craftsman’s workshop in which it was made,” notes Daria. The pervasive wood tones in the house are offset with pops of color from a painted chest, the bright blue upholstery of a vintage armchair and flowers from the garden.
Although the family has only lived here a few years, there’s a well-grounded sense of home in this refreshed old house. A ’50s-era chest of drawers, gifted to the couple back in their apartment days, occupies a prominent spot in the living area. The seating in the living room includes a chair from the same period that once belonged to Daria’s grandfather. An icon painted by a family friend hangs in a corner of the kitchen.
Simple, sound, solid, this home puts one in mind of what a wise man once said: “For a human being, just like for a bird, the world has many places to rest, but a nest, only one.”
Photography by Igor Dziedzicki/Alicja T. Agency.
Styling by Joanna Kowalczyk.
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