The Mennonite village here is the most perfect bit of camouflage in the world. It is located in a wood and as no house is visible it differs in no respect from any of the bluffs in sight, until you come right upon it. Even in the wood the houses are all set back from the street and a little tree-lined lane leads into the yards. Nothing can surpass the privacy thus obtained for each family. We turned in at the lane leading to David de Fehr’s house and when we presented the teacher’s letter of introduction, David and his wife laughed at our venture, looked us over, looked at each other, and agreed to take us in. This, briefly, was the manner of our reception into a Mennonite home with the opportunity of seeing at close quarters the life in a Mennonite village on the “Old Reserve”.
I think the first surprise came to us, after the idyllic situation of the village, in the large, substantial houses. Most of them were painted, usually white, all having Dutch shutters painted a Delft-blue.
Most of the houses are long, one-storey affairs with shingled roofs and are not unlike “Cape Cod houses” of the early type. The de Fehr home was a new, two-storey cottage with the characteristic Dutch shutters at the downstairs windows. It joined the barn by a separate room where water is pumped up for the stock in the winter. We visited a number of houses, drove through other villages and were at Morden and Winkler, but I saw only one house that might be said to be _in_ the barn, after the manner of the old-time farm-houses in France, although more or less all appeared to be connected _with_ the barn so that you could step out of one into the other without going out-of-doors. At Mr. de Fehr’s a fair white door led into the barn from a room with pumpkin-yellow floors which looked as if they had just been painted--as they look down in Quebec. There were, by way of furniture in the room, which might be called the winter-kitchen, two lounges, a table, two or three chairs, and a rocker in which David de Fehr sat to read his mail, including the different newspapers to which he subscribes.
In addition to this room, on the first floor, were a large parlour, a smaller room used as an office, and the family bedroom. There were three bedrooms upstairs. In our room, in addition to the bed with its heavy homemade all-wool comforters, a large Russian chest with black, iron handles, occupied one side.