THE ROADS TO HOODOO LAKE
(Page 4 of 7)
January/February 1971
By George Bumpus
In the spring I quit my job in Prince George. We were anxious to get our garden planted and build a root cellar and large woodshed. I bought some lumber from a small mill and started construction. The weather was very dry that spring, with clear skies and sunshine almost every day.
RELATED CONTENT
THE WOODSHED
A good wood stove and heater plus the plentiful local timber supply adds up to a sure way of beating the otherwise ridiculous cost of heating a building during our cold winters. To do the job right, though, you'll need a woodshed that holds at least four cords of wood.
The roof of a woodshed should be high enough to permit the easy swing of an axe. I made the mistake of building our shed too low and I have to do all necessary chopping outside. This can be a nuisance in nasty weather. Eventually I'll build a higher addition to our shed.
We've found that birch and pine are the best firewood in this area. Either, if cut and split by midsummer, will be dry enough to burn well the following winter. Birch will even burn halfway decently while still green.
ROOT CELLARS
A root cellar is one necessity that we homesteaders can't get by without. It keeps all root crops, canned goods and apples from freezing in the winter and from spoiling during the summer. Karen and I built ours by digging a large hole in the side of a small hill. We framed in the hole with a double wall and ceiling of lumber and using black building paper as a vapor barrier. The four-inch, space within the hollow walls and ceiling was filled with sawdust for insulation. The floor of a root cellar is always left na dirt and, in extremely cold weather, you should never open the cellar's door and allow the canned goods and other food to freeze. To prevent this problem, the best root cellars have a vestibule entrance with two doors about six feet apart.
Most root vegetables packed and stored in such a cellar in the late so mmer or fall will keep until the following spring. We've stored potatoes in ours all winter and into the following summer successfully and other vegetables have kept most of the winter.
A GARAGE IN THE NORTH COUNTRY
We wanted a garage but it had to wail for the following summer to be built. As you'll see later, we found that it's next to impossible to get by without a garage up here if you have a car or track. It's bad enough to dig a vehicle out of a snowdrift every time you want to drive into town for supplies . . . it's even more annoying to have to build a fire under the oil pan before the thing will start in 40-below weather. A garage is especially important when there is no electricity (as is the case at our homestead) because a block heater cannot be used.
HOW TO FIGHT BEAVERS AND LOSE
We also wanted to drain our 30-acre meadow that had been dammed by beavers. The first step was to lower the culvert under the road at the end of the meadow and since the Highway Department couldn't get to that for a year—this was another project that had to wait until the following summer. Once the culvert was changed, however, I found that my work had just began.
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