Covid-19’s ‘stay at home’ style would have perfectly suited Mat and Martha Verhonick who lived off the grid on their 80-acre farm north of Enumclaw. Their cabin was built in 1880s, but Mat arrived there in 1888, just five days old. He lived his entire life in the same home, and like his father Marcus, an Austrian immigrant who settled in Krain, farmed the land and raised dairy cows. This photo of Mat seated behind his 1881 wood stove was taken in 1974 as part of a Seattle Times series.
The Verhonicks became newspaper celebrities of sorts in 1969 when they were featured on the cover of the Sunday Pictorial magazine. The couple lived meagerly without electricity, natural gas, telephone, or running water. Kerosene lamps provided light, the wood stove heat, while water came from rooftop drains when it rained or a nearby spring when it didn’t. They quit driving their only car, a 1915 Overland after a shed roof fell down upon it, even though the auto had less than 10,000 miles. Mat again landed on the Seattle Times front page in 1970 when property tax increases threatened to swallow his farm. Living on $40 a month in Social Security checks, at age 82 he was no longer able to farm or care for his cows. Their $1,997 tax bill left them few alternatives except selling to developers. This is the first of a four-part series on the Verhonick’s simple approach to life. The 1974 photos by Josef Scaylea come courtesy of JoAnne Matsumura, an Issaquah historian.
