Skip to content

Top Navigation

Midwest Living Midwest Living
  • Travel
  • Food
  • Home
  • Garden
  • Holidays & Entertaining
  • Videos
  • Sweeps and Contests

Profile Menu

Your Account

Account

  • Join Now
  • Newsletters
  • Email Preferences
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Help
  • Logout

More

  • Win Your Dream Getaway!
  • Give a Gift Subscription
  • Magazine Issues
  • Destinations
Login
Subscribe
Pin FB

Explore Midwest Living

Midwest Living Midwest Living
  • Explore

    Explore

    • 40 Favorite Comfort Food Recipes

      Macaroni and cheese, Amish apple dumplings and chicken pot pie are among our Midwest comfort food favorites. Read More Next
    • 50 Romantic Midwest Getaways

      Romance, of course, can be wherever the two of you are. But wonderful surroundings help. We found some of the most romantic places anywhere in the Midwest—in the city and country. All you have to do is get away together! Read More Next
    • 50 Decadent Chocolate Dessert Recipes

      Chocolate lovers, these are for you: 50 of our best rich-and-gooey chocolate dessert recipes, including pie, pudding, cake, cookies, fondue and brownies. Read More Next
  • Travel

    Travel

    See all Travel

    50 Midwest Resorts We Love

    Our favorite Midwest resort destinations range from cozy lakeside lodges to indoor water park behemoths. Dive in to check out our top picks for a fabulous Midwest getaway.
    • Illinois
    • Indiana
    • Iowa
    • Kansas
    • Michigan
    • Minnesota
    • Missouri
    • Nebraska
    • North Dakota
    • Ohio
    • South Dakota
    • Wisconsin
    • Around the Region
    • Free Travel Info
  • Food

    Food

    See all Food

    Midwest Living November/December 2020 Recipes

    • Comfort Foods
    • Desserts & Baking
    • Breakfast
    • Quick & Easy
    • Chicken
    • Soups & Stews
    • Midwest Favorites
    • Fruits & Vegetables
    • Fish
    • Grilling
  • Home

    Home

    See all Home

    50 Quick and Easy Holiday Decorating Ideas

    Give your home holiday style in a flash with these simple yet creative decorating projects.
    • Quick Decorating
    • Featured Homes
    • Organizing & Storage
    • Outdoor Living
    • Seasonal Decorating
    • Room Decorating
  • Garden

    Garden

    See all Garden

    14 Cheerful Winter Container Gardens

    Create bountiful outdoor winter arrangements with a little help from Mother Nature.
    • Container Gardens
    • Flowers
    • Featured Gardens
    • Midwest Gardening Calendar
    • Garden Ideas & Inspiration
  • Holidays & Entertaining

    Holidays & Entertaining

    See all Holidays & Entertaining

    40 Easy Christmas Crafts

    Decorate your home, make a gift or create an ornament with our 40 ideas for fun and easy Christmas crafts.
    • Christmas
    • Valentine's Day
    • Easter
    • July 4th
    • Halloween
    • Thanksgiving
  • Videos

    Videos

    See all Videos
    • How to Make an All-Butter Pie Crust
    • How to Make Pumpkin-Spice Icebox Cake
  • Sweeps and Contests

    Sweeps and Contests

    See all Sweeps and Contests

    Warm-Weather Getaways Sweepstakes

    • Winter Getaways Sweepstakes
    • Warm-Weather Getaways Sweepstakes

Profile Menu

Subscribe this link opens in a new tab
Your Account

Account

  • Join Now
  • Newsletters
  • Email Preferences
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Help
  • Logout

More

  • Win Your Dream Getaway!
  • Give a Gift Subscription
  • Magazine Issues
  • Destinations
Login
Sweepstakes

Follow us

  1. Midwest Living
  2. Travel
  3. Iowa
  4. Making Pies in Iowa's "American Gothic" House

Making Pies in Iowa's "American Gothic" House

By Writer Trevor Meers; Photographer Jason Donnelly
June 01, 2012
Skip gallery slides
Pin
From the porch of an iconic American home, Beth Howard cheered up the world, one pie at a time.
Start Slideshow

1 of 4

Pin
Facebook Tweet Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

Piece of mind

Editor's note: Beth moved out of the home and closed the pie stand in September 2014. She still maintains her blog here:  theworldneedsmorepie.comBeth Howard had a rough weekend. Disappointing business trip. Tough crowd at a public event. But it's nothing a day of making pies can't fix. Back home in Eldon, a southeastern Iowa town of about 900, she dives into her favorite ritual: peeling and slicing Granny Smith apples until she's filled two plates, tucked them under blankets of handmade dough and slid it all into the oven."Therapy pie," Beth calls it. "The healing part is the making of it and giving away something of yourself." Then she lifts out a slice and pays the comfort forward by sliding it across the wooden table in my direction.Without looking down, I realize I'm sharing something bigger than just pie. But when I do glance at the pitchfork in the crust, I remember that we're eating America's pie in one of America's best-known houses.

1 of 4

Advertisement
Advertisement

2 of 4

Pin
Facebook Tweet Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

Rediscovered roots

Beth lives and makes apple pies ("I like apple because it's a classic," she says) in the American Gothic house, that unmistakable white-frame home with the arched window in Grant Wood's 1930 painting of dour country folk. Perhaps no image but the Mona Lisa is more famous, and to Beth, the house it shows plays a critical role in a story of rediscovered roots, pies and the road back from a broken heart.

2 of 4

3 of 4

Pin
Facebook Tweet Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

Emotional moorings

Beth left Iowa after high school to make a life in Portland, Los Angeles, New York and Germany. On a college bike tour, she got caught snatching apples from the Washington orchard of an old pastry chef, who then took her in as a pupil in the art of making pie. Later, she landed a job in a Malibu, California, bakery making pies for the likes of Spielberg (coconut cream) and Streisand (lemon meringue). "The shop asked what my qualifications were for making pie," she says. "I told them, 'I'm from Iowa,' and they hired me."A few years later, she found herself a widow at 48, mourning the sudden death of her husband, Marcus. Casting about for emotional moorings, she returned to Iowa in August 2010 to judge a pie contest and stumbled across the American Gothic house in Eldon. It stood 15 miles from where she grew up--and was available for rent from the State Historical Society of Iowa. "It was adorable and instantly recognizable," she says. "The next thing I knew, I was moving in."(The house actually has two Gothic windows; Beth's lease requires her to keep light lace curtains in the famous front one.)

3 of 4

Advertisement

4 of 4

Pin
Facebook Tweet Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

The joy of pies

Beth shares the small house (roughly 700 square feet) with her terriers, Jack and Daisy. It makes the perfect home base for hosting pie-making parties, working on her memoir Making Piece (due out in 2012) and joining the Thursday senior citizens' lunch when she pays the extra dollar charged for younger people. "I've become friends with people I never would have met in Portland. I'm discovering roots I didn't even know I had, and I'm surprised how deep they run," Beth says.Among her new friends are the crowds who pose for photos with pitchfork in hand in front of the house and then buy a snack from Beth's Pitchfork Pie Stand on the front porch. Beth barely breaks even on the pies, but she's reluctant to raise the price. She'd rather people discover the joy of baking their own anyway.Beth says, "If reading my story inspires other people to face their fears and make homemade pie and then share that pie to make someone else feel better, then I'm fulfilling some kind of useful purpose in this life."(A version of this story appeared in Midwest Living® May/June 2011.)Update: Beth moved in September 2014. For more information, see her blog at theworldneedsmorepie.com. For information on the American Gothic house, see americangothichouse.net.

4 of 4

Replay gallery

Share the Gallery

Pinterest Facebook

Up Next

By Writer Trevor Meers; Photographer Jason Donnelly

Share the Gallery

Pinterest Facebook
Trending Videos
Advertisement
Skip slide summaries

Everything in This Slideshow

Advertisement

View All

1 of 4 Piece of mind
2 of 4 Rediscovered roots
3 of 4 Emotional moorings
4 of 4 The joy of pies

Share options

Facebook Tweet Mail Email iphone Send Text Message

Login

Midwest Living

Magazines & More

Learn More

  • Contact Us
  • Help
  • Free Newsletters this link opens in a new tab
  • Subscribe this link opens in a new tab
  • Customer Service this link opens in a new tab
  • Renew this link opens in a new tab
  • Advertise this link opens in a new tab
  • Content Licensing this link opens in a new tab
  • Affiliate Program
  • Free Travel Info this link opens in a new tab
  • Special Promotions this link opens in a new tab
  • Sweepstakes this link opens in a new tab
  • Video
  • Home Advisor this link opens in a new tab

Connect

Follow Us
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Other Meredith Sites

Other Meredith Sites

  • 4 Your Health this link opens in a new tab
  • Allrecipes this link opens in a new tab
  • All People Quilt this link opens in a new tab
  • Better Homes & Gardens this link opens in a new tab
  • Bizrate Insights this link opens in a new tab
  • Bizrate Surveys this link opens in a new tab
  • Cooking Light this link opens in a new tab
  • Daily Paws this link opens in a new tab
  • EatingWell this link opens in a new tab
  • Eat This, Not That this link opens in a new tab
  • Entertainment Weekly this link opens in a new tab
  • Food & Wine this link opens in a new tab
  • Health this link opens in a new tab
  • Hello Giggles this link opens in a new tab
  • Instyle this link opens in a new tab
  • Martha Stewart this link opens in a new tab
  • Midwest Living this link opens in a new tab
  • More this link opens in a new tab
  • MyRecipes this link opens in a new tab
  • MyWedding this link opens in a new tab
  • My Food and Family this link opens in a new tab
  • MyLife this link opens in a new tab
  • Parenting this link opens in a new tab
  • Parents this link opens in a new tab
  • People this link opens in a new tab
  • People en EspaƱol this link opens in a new tab
  • Rachael Ray Magazine this link opens in a new tab
  • Real Simple this link opens in a new tab
  • Ser Padres this link opens in a new tab
  • Shape this link opens in a new tab
  • Siempre Mujer this link opens in a new tab
  • Southern Living this link opens in a new tab
  • SwearBy this link opens in a new tab
  • Travel & Leisure this link opens in a new tab
Midwest Living is part of the Meredith Home Group. © Copyright 2021 Meredith Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policythis link opens in a new tab Terms of Servicethis link opens in a new tab Ad Choicesthis link opens in a new tab California Do Not Sellthis link opens a modal window Web Accessibilitythis link opens in a new tab
© Copyright . All rights reserved. Printed from https://www.midwestliving.com

View image

Making Pies in Iowa's "American Gothic" House
this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines.