Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1877-10-18


tenacity to the mass. Then Peter,
as stone-mason, and Katrina, as his |
slender" lay up the walls of stones
and mortar, thick and solid enough |
to withstand the storms of next ten
years. The roof, doors and windows
are added, and their warm cottage
has cost them next to nothing.
How about their fuel ? Prairie
grass again comes to the rescue.
When Russian family prepares for
cold weather, they provide a large
supply of the coarse, rank growth of
the swales. But this would be
wretched sort of fuel to burn loosely
10 common stoves. 1t needs
Russian stove and special prepare.
ton for burning. Peter and Katrina
do not buy an iron cook stove. They
build in the center of their house a
large sort of stove, oven, and range
combined, of the same stone work
and mud mortar as before described.
This edifice, in the house of large
family, is about six or eight feet
square, and is fearfuliy and wonder
fully made. 1t has several compart-
ments. The fre-box, where the
grass is burned, is capacious, and
twice day is stuffed with grass,
twisted in compact twists. Very
little air being supplied, it burns
slowly, and requires renewing at long
intervals but the stone structure
gives out heat enough to warm the
house abundantly. There are other
compartments in the stove for bak>
ing and cooking, and on top of the
whole is capital hot place to sleep
in cold night. Then when the
wintery storms lay an embargo on
all teamiDg and travel, the boys only
have to 90 to the convenient hay
ricks for an unfailing supply of good
fuel, which has cost nothing but la
Dor; and the cost in labor has been
far less to men and teams than that
of cutting and hauling wood, even
when close at hand.
The hand labor needful to twist
up the hay into proper form is not
much, but, as usual, Yankee ingenu-
ity has provided machines for doing
it much better and easier, and Yank-
ton is the place where the enterprise
centers at present. A cheap little
crank apparatus, costing four or five
dollars at retail, will enable any two
far Hfer- boys of ten to fifteen years to
twist up solid bolts or skeins OF hay,
about the size OF srlcks of stove
wood, which can be burned with
good results in any common cook
stove and hundreds of families, Amer
lean as we'll as Russian, now fnd
them invaluable aids to exc out the
scanty wood pile when far distant
from timber. In the coolest weather
the machines may save from actual
freezing, while in the summer
months they furnish suitable fuel for
culinary uses. There are also hay
stoves invented, where the hay is
burned on the principle of slow COM
bustion, as in the Russian practice,
the fire box containing quite guam
tity of hay tightly packed, and the
draft being very slight.
| have also seen the Russians man
ufacture a kind of artificial peat on
their prairie farms, which | mention
more as curiosity than for imitation.
They gather and save all the drop
pings of their cows and oxen till
autumn. This is easy, for in Dakota
no fences are required by law, and
stock is often picketed to posts by
the straw stack every night. A small
area of ground is spread deep with
straw and this accumulated manure,
and on some wet, stormy time the
women and children lead or drive
some oxen or cows around and
around over it, till their feet have in
corporated the whole into we'll
mixed mass of straw and manure,
from six to twelve inches deep. This
is left alone till long dry spell, when
it becomes solid enough to cut up
with an ak or sharp spade into
blocks near a foot square. These
barn-yard peat-blocks, when corded
up in piles and we'll dried, burn about
as well as cottonwood, and their odor
reminds us OF the "buffalo chips"
which had been the plainsmen's chief
fuel from time immemorial, not only |
on the Western prairies, but the
pampas of South America and the |
steppes of Siberia. A. W. b.