|
Kingston,Mi | The house my mother lived in had walls 2 ft. thick of locally mined Limestone. You could close the exterior door, lean against the wall and take off your overshoes before opening the interior door. The limestone was mined out of the eventual basement. That house was primarily heated with the big old cast iron wood range in the kitchen. Five generations ago the first of my Codd/Code/Coad relatives left southern Ireland for Ontario in 1822, soil was thin but the hardwoods were big, so they cut timber and burned a lot of it. That house had a wood shed attached that was about 20 by 20 feet square and 10 feet to the rafters.
As my 96 year old uncle is said to have told my grandfather when he came home from 6 years in Europe during WW2 "the trouble with farming in Ontario was you cut hay all summer, wood all winter and hauled crap and ashes the rest of the time" , he didn't use the word crap either.
A house on the next concession line where my paternal grandmother spent a few years in her youth had doors opposite each other in the kitchen and a large fireplace. When a new back log was needed for the fireplace, they hitched a single horse to a short log and skidded into the kitchen before rolling it into the fireplace. Those early Irish farmers most have thought they had achieved heaven with the abundant firewood and being able to build houses that would have been mansions in England and Ireland. | |
|
How did the settlers/Indians not freeze too death?
