By Jack Puterbaugh
Isanti County resident, local historian
So far this has been a fairly harsh winter. At least when you are in the house to keep warm, all you have to do is set the thermostat to a comfortable temperature. If you heat with natural gas the thermostat is your only concern.
However, if you heat with propane or fuel oil it is important to keep the tank filled. The convenience of the way we keep ourselves warm today is in contrast with a by-gone day.
If you look around the basement of an older house, you will probably find a small room near the heating plant that is probably used for storage. That room was known as the “coal bin.”
It was a placed that was used for the storage of coal that was used to heat the house. The furnace had to be stoked by hand several times a day. If you lived in town that was the way you heated the house. People who lived on a farm probably had a different system. In the winter there were the usual chores of taking care of the animals, but since there were no field chores a lot of time was spent cutting wood for the kitchen range and heating stove. The wood was from the wood lot(s) that almost every farm had. The dead trees were the first ones to be cut down.
They were trimmed and cut into logs that were 10 to 12 feet in length. Since this was a time before the advent of the chain saw the saws used were moved back and forth by hand. There were one man and two man cross cut saws.
After the trunk and limbs had been cut to the proper length they were hauled to the farm yard by a horse-drawn bob-sled where they were stacked to await being cut into chunks that were some twelve to fifteen inches.
Toward the end of winter, a community saw-rig and shared labor would cut the stacked wood into chunks. The saw-rig was usually a thirty inch saw blade that was belt driven by a converted automobile engine.
There would be a person who stood on each side of the saw blade. Several persons would pick up a log to be sawed, and it would be passed through the saw blade. The person who held the piece that had been cut would throw it over his shoulder to a pile that formed.
As I recall the process, I tend to shudder and marvel that more persons weren’t seriously injured or killed, since the saw blade did not have a protective shield and the ground was still icy and slippery.
Anyway, after the logs had been cut into chunks of the proper length they had to be split, by hand, into smaller sizes. The smaller chunks were used in the kitchen range, while the larger ones were used in the heating stove that occupied a place in the living room. One of my after school chores was to fill the “wood box.” It was often said that when wood was used for heating purposes it heated you twice, once when you cut it, and once when you burned it.
Come to think of it, setting the thermostat is a lot easier.
This story was originally printed in the Isanti County News on Feb. 10, 2010.
Isanti County resident, local historian
So far this has been a fairly harsh winter. At least when you are in the house to keep warm, all you have to do is set the thermostat to a comfortable temperature. If you heat with natural gas the thermostat is your only concern.
However, if you heat with propane or fuel oil it is important to keep the tank filled. The convenience of the way we keep ourselves warm today is in contrast with a by-gone day.
If you look around the basement of an older house, you will probably find a small room near the heating plant that is probably used for storage. That room was known as the “coal bin.”
It was a placed that was used for the storage of coal that was used to heat the house. The furnace had to be stoked by hand several times a day. If you lived in town that was the way you heated the house. People who lived on a farm probably had a different system. In the winter there were the usual chores of taking care of the animals, but since there were no field chores a lot of time was spent cutting wood for the kitchen range and heating stove. The wood was from the wood lot(s) that almost every farm had. The dead trees were the first ones to be cut down.
They were trimmed and cut into logs that were 10 to 12 feet in length. Since this was a time before the advent of the chain saw the saws used were moved back and forth by hand. There were one man and two man cross cut saws.
After the trunk and limbs had been cut to the proper length they were hauled to the farm yard by a horse-drawn bob-sled where they were stacked to await being cut into chunks that were some twelve to fifteen inches.
Toward the end of winter, a community saw-rig and shared labor would cut the stacked wood into chunks. The saw-rig was usually a thirty inch saw blade that was belt driven by a converted automobile engine.
There would be a person who stood on each side of the saw blade. Several persons would pick up a log to be sawed, and it would be passed through the saw blade. The person who held the piece that had been cut would throw it over his shoulder to a pile that formed.
As I recall the process, I tend to shudder and marvel that more persons weren’t seriously injured or killed, since the saw blade did not have a protective shield and the ground was still icy and slippery.
Anyway, after the logs had been cut into chunks of the proper length they had to be split, by hand, into smaller sizes. The smaller chunks were used in the kitchen range, while the larger ones were used in the heating stove that occupied a place in the living room. One of my after school chores was to fill the “wood box.” It was often said that when wood was used for heating purposes it heated you twice, once when you cut it, and once when you burned it.
Come to think of it, setting the thermostat is a lot easier.
This story was originally printed in the Isanti County News on Feb. 10, 2010.
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