Homestead mailing list

[SJC <indexer AT localnet.com>]

Gene GeRue wrote:
> .......I am mulling the design of a raised fireplace that would bake, 
> heat the house, and be pretty to sit at.
In the 70s we had a number of agricultural exchangees from Poland who 
stayed with us for 2 years at a clip.  The most interesting were those 
from western Poland, in that area which has been passed back and forth 
from Poland/Russia several times over the years.  They all described 
ovens/stoves/heating devices such as would fit all the above.  The most 
interesting of them, and one who is still a friend, came from what even 
he described as a very "old" area of Poland, and the stoves there 
actually formed, or took place of, the wall between kitchen and 
bedroom:  on the bedroom side were sleeping benches which were the far 
side of the kitchen stove, which had both a bake oven and a firebox 
under the cooktop, plus an area which held a removable clay pot of some 
sort that held water for heating.  The stove at Eugene's parents' house 
had 4 fireboxes, one accessible from outdoors, and 2 chimneys, one 
'short' and one convoluted, which was the one that ran alongside the 
sleeping benches.   I used to have some pictures of 2 of these stoves, 
one in his family's home and one a brother of his had built.  One had 
designs (and shallow ledges, little alcoves) sculpted into the clay 
outlayer and the other, older stove had tiles of several sorts, some 
appearing to me to have been reused from another project.  Both 
qualified as works of art to my mind, but all functional.

Everytime I hear someone describe something as 'all-in'one' I think of 
these stoves.   I've read of the kachelofen stoves, but these seem not 
to considerably more complex.  There were, as recently as the 50s, still 
people building these stoves, according to Eugene.

SJ, in Maine, where the weather has turned downright nasty