Homesteading in The Kootenays
(Page 2 of 2)
May/June 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
Our place was an old homestead, so the buildings were old but useable until we could replace them. The first one to be replaced was the cellar as it is very important to have adequate storage for fruit and vegetables. We feel that food storage should be separate from the house, because of the possibility of fire. Our cellar is built out of tamarack logs; two walls four feet apart with planer shavings between for insulation. It has a gambrel type roof so as to allow area above the cellar for storing empty fruit jars, boxes and other odds and ends.
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Next came the log house, which my husband worked on between jobs. The timber for it came off the mountain just across the field from our house. We used horses to skid the logs to the building site, and a hand winch was rigged to handle the logs into position on the walls. The foundation is rock and mortar. Tamarack logs were used because they are long, straight and durable. Because of my husband's excellent ability with hand tools (axe, adze, broad axe, etc.) he hewed all the floor and ceiling joists, stringers, and even the necessary 2 x 4's used in partitions. The only boughten material used was the lumber for floors and ceilings. Our house is 28 x 30 with three rooms upstairs. The stairs are spiral to save floorspace. In the kitchen we have a dumbwaiter to carry the wood up from the basement for our old style cookstove. The house is heated by a woodheater in the basement, a cookstove in the kitchen and an antique Franklin fireplace in the living room. A lot of our furnishings are considered antique, but to us they are a necessity. A hand operated washing machine, and sad irons take the place of an automatic washer and electric iron. By use of a pelton wheel we can produce a small amount of electricity for lights from our gravity water system.
For ourselves, and our children, this move to Canada didn't cause us to have to adapt to a new way of living as we had always lived in the country. My husband was raised on a farm, and has spent most of his life working in the woods. I was raised in logging and sawmill camps. To do without electricity, and being isolated is not new to us.
Homesteading has a different meaning now than it did years ago, but in the new meaning we are "homesteading." By raising our own meat, vegetables and fruits we try to be as self-sufficient as possible, and can get by on seasonal employment. It is quite a satisfaction to be out of the so-called "rat-race," and to be individuals rather than "cogs-in-a-wheel."
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