Many farms in Wisconsin had separate small buildings situated just steps from their main home which they called their “summer kitchen”. The centerpiece was a black iron cook stove attached to a brick chimney that carried the smoke out of the kitchen. There was room enough for a table and chairs and cupboards to store kitchen utensils and often a “pie safe” to store the freshly-baked pies that came from the wood-stoked oven.

On hot summer days, the housewife cooked the family meals outside of the main house kitchen in the summer kitchen to avoid heating the house.

This 100+ year-old summer kitchen was donated by sisters, Carol and Ann Larson and Mary Lou Smith in the fall of 2006. It was one of many buildings on the old Andrew Knutson Farm on Beach Road in Sister Bay.