The Brave Little Toaster

And Other Design Choices That Build an Aesthetic Worth Destroying

Look at her. Look at that absolute unit of 1970’s color and design. The harvest yellow! The mirror-steel walls! The darkness slider with Pantone swatches?! The slight tilt to the lever from decades of grateful and attractive owners’ pressing down their slices...

Hoo! Now that’s what I call a toaster.

I’ve been looking for this bad boy for over a year. I haven’t owned one since my 1950’s Toastmaster died in college. I never replaced it. You know how it is. You plan on finding a new one, but there’s always somewhere else money can go that’s more important than toast. I rarely ate toast. Everybody moved on.

Things change. Toast has gone from once-a-month-by-accident snack to several meals a week ever since my neighbor has been trading her homemade sourdough for eggs on a weekly basis. Toast is something I now consume regularly. It felt like it was time to invest in something more efficient than cranking an entire oven to 350°and setting a 10-minute timer while I carry water to sheep.

Here’s the thing, I refused to buy a new one. New appliances feel soulless to me. They are unattractive, over-complicated, impossible to repair, cheaply made, and the entire point of them is to last just long enough to beat the warranty.

I wanted a work horse, something that has been making toast since before I was born. And I wanted it to feel like it belonged in the home I am slowly trying to fix up as I acclimate to life with serotonin for the first time.

Enter: The 1970-1979 Proctor Silex Toaster in Chrome & Harvest Gold.

Modern art, far as I’m concerned.

Living spaces here are about comfort, nostalgia, music, art, women and nature

Cold Antler Farm’s Style

I don’t know how to explain my style or what to call it (open to suggestions in the comments!), but the intention is to combine the past with the present in vivid color, with utility and nostalgia at the forefront.

I like that there are old things and new things working together here. I make my living as writer and homesteader yet I do it with a smartphone and the internet. My life is a chaotic clash of luddite dreams, pop culture, and functional technology and I want that to be expressed in every corner of this house, from the inside of the fridge to the murals I am painting on the walls.

Back to the toaster: It matches the yellow 1970’s rotary phone I used until 2022, which is still mounted to a wooden beam from 1860 in my kitchen. They both share their space with a basic white fridge and electric oven. But everything else I picked out or someone I loved did. It’s all pre-1990 dishes, gadgets, and furniture, collected since college, an item at a time.

There’s my grandfather’s red steel and chrome kitchen table that matches the same one in Luke’s Diner. The 70’s crockpots, the 50’s bread box, the coffee makers (stovetop espresso and french press, both steel and non-electric). There’s also a bookshelf of farm/food resources and a real icebox from 1914. I use it. I stick 12lb ice bricks into it. It is a pure summer delight to pull a bottle of frosty soda out of her and she’s fridge backup in a power outage…

Old, utilitarian, whimsical, and responsively indulgent.
I’ll take that in an appliance or eulogy any day.

I want my home to have real things. Actual fire and ice, not dials for heating and cooling. I am not interested in comfort if the comfort isn’t interesting. I feel this way about everything from microwaves to relationships. It’s a good rule to live by.

Everything in my house is a part of my personal history museum on tangible display. And if that sounds self-involved, well babe, myself is all I got. I get a real kick out me and I like ornamenting my lair with sentimental kitsch. It’s my thing.

ikr

Older is Better For All of Us

I am too old and too gay to buy anything that doesn’t work exceptionally well and move my aesthetic forward. When the time to adopt a toaster was nigh, I started looking online and around local thrift stores for exactly what I wanted. It had to waltz with everything else in my personal nostalgia museum (house). I wanted it made before 1980 and bright yellow to offset the colors of my kitchen: pumpkin orange, purple, sky blue, yellow, and stop-sign red.

And here’s the thing, not only did I get something that felt like Cold Antler, I got something better than 99% of what’s available new today. I also got a piece of my home state’s history. This toaster was made in Pennsylvania. Someone who worked in a factory paid their mortgage thanks to this toaster.

I am very envious of the past, but not for the propaganda you see trad wives on TikTok performing with $200 “retro” SMEG toasters in their kitchen set design. (I even found one for $850!) No, I’m nostalgic for a time when everyday Americans could pay their mortgage building toasters.

People right now are being trained to believe the 1950’s were better because wives didn’t work and made pot roast with the kids at home. As if the mid-century rise of the middle-class was the result of patriarchy and not a 50% tax on the richest citizens.

That economy will take a revolution to return to. In the meantime, I got to give my money to a heartbeat instead of a corporation. Buying anything used is better for all of us.

It’s better for the environment, too, since it’s something that already exists not being added to a landfill. When I see that yellow toaster in the kitchen, I see another small choice I made that moves my whole life forward with whimsical intention. Because design matters. It matters so much.

Furniture in this house was either handed down, gifted, found free, or already here. The hawk is from the other side of the mountain (literally).

Build The Life You Want

Folks, I want to talk about how I decorate and why. Too many people think interior design is for snobs or the wealthy. They think it’s a skill you need to learn or artistry you are born with. But I am not talking about taste or talent. I am talking about style.

Cold Antler Farm is the residence of a working-class farmer/artisan. It isn’t expensive. I have never bought a television or couch in my life. Everything here has been handed down, gifted, found free, or already here when I bought the place.

I never wanted a home anyone else could copy, or would want to. I wanted a home that felt like sleeping in a reliquary dedicated to worshiping the life of my dreams.

Regular people can still make their homes into places that are both a refuge and a prayer, surrounding your everyday with reminders of primal comfort, personal meaning, and aspirations for a better tomorrow.

No one on HGTV is going to teach you this. You can not buy it. It’s impossible to purchase, which is the whole point. You can not copy my version, because a sapphic mountain hobbit is a very different vibe than a middle-school art teacher into baseball or a night shift nurse in Toledo that loves breakdancing. You can however, copy my system.

The System:

Create the world you want to live in starting with your own space. Do it by combining items of personal import and memory—artifacts of your own life— and display them in your home with colors and textures that comfort and excite you, combined with reusable/repaired furniture, clothing, and appliances from a better age. That’s it. You mix those things together in any space and the results will all be different, highly personal, rewarding, and inspiring.

Think of it this way: trends are tracing a font, but style is your signature, only you can create the original. Your house doesn’t have to look like this eccentric TGIFridays of mine, but I want to encourage you to take some risks.

Yes, it is material. Consumption is something we all have to do. You might as well do it in a way that expresses your individaulity and brings you joy. Make it a lifelong project. That’s what life is.

These are the colors my rooms are based on. I am not trying to impress people that flip homes on cable tv. I am trying to impress ancient forest gods and women that read too much.

I Can’t Wait To Ruin It All

And my favorite part about building this intricate bachelor pad displaying decades of a woman’s life!? The day I get to mess it all up.

I can’t wait to fall in love with someone who has her own colors, her own furniture, her own brave little toaster. How wondrous this place will look making two stories sing together, replacing parts of myself with whatever of her is better or makes more sense.

How lovely it will be seeing this temple to one woman’s efforts turned into a community center for two. I can’t wait to see what we create together. When my place becomes ours.

And if I never meet her, then I have created such a lovely tribute to a hard won life, one weird decision at a time. I did it without piling up credit card debt or basing it on someone else’s style. In doing so, I got to know myself better and fall in love with my story along the way.

If any of that sounds good to you, please stop buying new toasters.
A better world is possible.

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Speaking of Design!

This farmer need to earn enough in three weeks to make the November mortgage, at least, and cover an unexpected vet bill. So I am offering 4 logo designs on sale for $100! (regular price is $250!) First come first served!

That is $150 off the job, but the catch is you can’t start the logo work with me until Jan 15th, 2025 or later. You get a discount by paying upfront now, and I start work after the holiday slump.

Don’t need a logo? Someone you need a gift for this month might! I have pdf gift certificates I can email with instructions on how the receiver can start work with me when they are ready! Donate it to a local animal shelter, or a friend starting a dream of her own farm! Please contact me for more info, one is already in the process of being bought so 3 left!