Before their time the place was just a peasant farm, which, though large and flourishing, looked like any other farmstead. If there were a barn for ten cows and a stable for two horses, it was about all that could be expected. The main house had perhaps but one large room, where the entire household lived day and night, and a little pitch-dark kitchen called the _kåve._ There were many other buildings, of course--a larder, a bath house, a rye-loft and other sheds, a kiln, and a smithy; but they must have been rather small, as the farm at that time was not nearly so extensive as it is now. Only the nearest fields were then under cultivation. The old mistress used to wonder how the three clergymen had managed to build a stable for ten horses and a cow-house for thirty cows, besides all the big granaries, storehouses, and sheds which they seemed to have required. The brew house with an adjoining room, which was used for a farm-office, were also from their time, likewise the milk-room, loom-room, and bailiff’s lodge. Finally, along in the seventeen-nineties the old mistress’s father, Pastor Wennervik, built a new dwelling which was planned on a more modest scale than the other buildings. He was satisfied with a one-story house of four rooms and kitchen, and an attic with two gable chambers. But all the rooms, including the kitchen, were large and light, and so admirably adapted to living purposes that hominess, so to speak, met one with open arms at the threshold. Pastor Wennervik had also laid out the kitchen garden with its aromatic herb-beds and fruit trees, and the little rose garden. He was the son of a master gardener, and was himself quite clever at gardening. Many little rose bushes and grafted apple trees still growing on the farms round Ämtervik he had helped set out. In his youth he had been tutor at a great manor, where he conceived a fancy for fences and gates. Round the kitchen garden at Mårbacka he put a pretty white paling, with ornamental gates, and another round the rose garden. If one wished to drive in from the road, one had first to open a great gate, then pass range on range of out-buildings, with fences and gates at several points. It was the same with the front yard.