Digging your own Home by Linda Hubalek

Can you imagine digging your own home and living in (and around it) during our current summer heat and humidity?

My own Swedish ancestors did this very thing for their first home on the prairie.

Our family doesn’t have a photo of the original dugout dug in 1868 which was on the “Butter in the Well” farm, so here’s a photo from Kansas Memory to give you a visual view to contemplate while reading a passages from my book Butter in the Well. Young Swedish immigrant Kajsa Svensson comments on the building of their first “home”…

“April 8, 1868 I’m so hot and sweaty today. But I need my long-sleeved dress to protect me from the sun’s burning rays and the insects. We’ve been digging on the well for days. Carl fills the bucket up with dirt from the bottom of the hole, then I pull it up by a rope, dump the bucket and send it back down to him. He is very discouraged. First we almost get flooded out by the creek, and now we can’t find any water.  

 April 9th“I give up,” Carl said as he slumped at the bottom of the hole. “There’s no water here. We’re going to have to move to a different site.” We’re both tired, sunburned and disillusioned with our first week on our land. Tonight Carl took a walk to the river and shot a turkey for our supper. He needed a walk to cool down and I needing time to sit and rest my weary back and arms. We have so much digging ahead. I’m going to have to get used to doing hard physical work again. Life in Jacksonville softened my body. Christina is getting tired of being in the wagon but that’s the way it will have to be. If she wanders away in this tall grass, we could lose her forever.”

April 15^th
The creek runs through our land, across the south and up the west side until it empties into the river on the next section to the north of us. We moved our little camp into the middle of our farm on the far east edge since we know the creek can surprise us with a flood. Again we started the process of digging the well, one scoop at a time. Today we were rewarded with water.

April 18^thToday we start digging our home. I hate to live in the ground, burrowed in like a gopher, but we can’t afford the lumber it takes to build a house. What lumber we did find money for will be used sparingly. People say being in the ground protects you from the heat of the summer day and the freezing cold of winter. It will only be about 10 by 12 feet in size, just enough for our bodies and belongings. I’ll continue to cook outside on an open fire. We’ve scoured the creek for rocks to reinforce our walls. For our dugout to be a legal homestead house, we must have one window in it. We bought a small pane of glass in Salina that Carl will frame and put next to the door.  

April 23^rdCarl left ledges along the inside walls of the dugout to use for sitting and sleeping. He dug two additional recesses, one for a safe spot to sit a candle and another to hide our food away from the vermin.We cut strips of sod, about 12 by 18 by 2 inches, and laid them around the edge of our hole to build walls 3 feet high. This will give us the extra height to stand the door upright on the south end. Carl chopped down one tall straight tree by the river for the ridgepole. Fallen timber from the river and a few boards make up the roof rafters that were to nailed the ridgepole. We had a wagonload of tree limbs that we weaved in among the Next, dry grass, from around the house was layered on, then sod blocks on the roof. We threw dirt back on the roof from the hole that was dug. Just another day or two and we’ll move in.  

April 25^thWe saved the hard layer of sand from when we dug the well. This sand, and clay from the river bank, were mixed with water to plaster the walls of the dugout. It’s very crude, but it will have to do for our first winter. The dirt floor will get packed down in time. I’ll sprinkle my dishwater on it to help it harden. I wish we had rugs to cover the floor. It would make it warmer and easier to keep clean. I talked Carl into cutting up one board for a door. At least I’ll feel a little safer at night with it closed. The hungry howling of the wolves scares me.  

April 28^th Our sparse belongings from the wagon have filled the dugout in a hurry. Carl made two chairs out of a log he sawed up. Another board was fashioned into a table. The crate that held our supplies will be my cupboard. A lean-to bed is braced on the right side of the dugout, half on the ledge for support. Christina’s cradle fits under our bed when the cradle is not being used. A crude mattress was fashioned out of ticking filled with “prairie feathers.” I’m glad we brought along the bedding from our house in Jacksonville.Carl found some old buffalo horns when he was out walking. He nailed them up to the wall to hang our clothes on.  

April 29^th We hung the wagon sheet up as our ceiling for the dugout today. Last night there was a rattlesnake dangling from the rafters above Christina! Lord give me strength. I cannot get used to those things. Fear runs down my spine every time I see one. I’m tired of the snakes, mice and insects that drop down on us by surprise during a meal or during the night. Now that the weather has warmed up, the snakes are everywhere. I’m petrified one of us will get bitten and die on the spot. We were down at the creek yesterday for a few hours and came home to six vipers sunning themselves on the south side of the dugout. We’ve trampled down the grass around our “home,” but it does not seem to deter the snakes. I must carry a big stick wherever I go, so I can beat them out of our path. I can’t let Christina out of my sight now that she’s starting to walk.

We also have at least one pack rat that is stealing everything that I leave out. If I ever see it, I’m going to shoot it. I am almost as good a shot as Carl and I won’t hesitate at the trigger for the rat that stole my thimble.”

(Excerpts from Butter in the Well, © by Linda K. Hubalek)

Ready to build, and live in your home on the prairie now? Reading these passages makes me glad I'm living in the 21st century...

Thanks for stopping by to enjoy today's Sweethearts of the West blog.

Linda Hubalek

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LIFE IN A DUGOUT

By Charlene Raddon

Author Charlene Raddon

Unbelievable as it might seem, some pioneer settlers liked living in dugouts. Letters and diaries of pioneers recorded that these dwellings were surprisingly comfortable; cool in summer, snug and easily heated in winter. Thick walls and sod roofs supplied good insulation at a time when few people knew the value of insulated homes, and wooden houses lacked in this feature.

Most dugouts consisted of a single room (average 12’ x 12’) dug into the lee side of a low hill. Walls were created by cutting and stacking sod blocks to a height of seven or eight feet. Some dugouts had windows, usually store-bought and hauled from the nearest town. For a roof, cottonwood poles were placed side by side and spread with a thick layer of coarse prairie grass for insulation and to cut down on the dirt that sifted through. Over the grass a double layer of sod building blocks was carefully fitted. The first good rain prompted the sod to grow, and a tall growth of waving prairie grass soon covered the roof, almost concealing it.

Rough wooden planks were laid to provide flooring, if the family could afford to buy them. Otherwise, the floor was dirt sprinkled with water daily and swept with crude grass brooms until the surface was as hard and smooth as finished concrete.

Elaborate Dugout

Walls were lined with newspapers pasted or pinned up with small, sharpened sticks to keep the, dirt from brushing off. Some more ambitious families located outcroppings of limestone rock which was burned and mixed with screened sand to provide a plaster coating for the walls—a vast improvement over untreated walls that could not keep out all the dirt, or insects.

Unfortunately, the pioneer dugout couldn't stand up to the demands of prosperity. The fertile prairie sod—turned over in the fall and broken down to mellow richness by winter snows, freezing and thawing—produced bumper crops of corn and small grains. Once a pioneer family had money in the bank, construction of a clap board house became the major goal. Grandma couldn't wait to get her family out of "that hole in the ground" and into a “more suitable” uninsulated clapboard structure: A house that was stifling hot in the summer and poorly heated in the winter by buffalo chips in the kitchen range or costly store bought coal that had to be hauled from town, carefully hoarded and sparingly doled out.

Log and wood supplemented dugout

Money provided the means to build wooden houses, but it was the desire to improve the family’s status and supposed living conditions that was the driving force that ultimately destroyed the dugout. Most lasted little more than a decade, but a few pictures still exist, and memories and journals provide records of the dugout's comforts and advantages.  Of course the disadvantages were also recorded.

It might be pointed out that dugouts were the first homes of many homesteaders well into the twentieth century. My paternal grandparents moved from Kansas to the Oklahoma panhandle in 1916 and lived in a dugout until a house could be built. I’m not sure when my mother’s folks did the same thing, but it would have been a bit later. Mother was the eldest of twelve children. Her father was a great farm worker and was in much demand by other farmers. Unfortunately, Grandfather didn’t want to work for other people; he wanted to farm his own land. But without someone to tell him what to do and when, he couldn’t quite seem to succeed at farming. Poor living conditions and sparse food was the result, so the family frequently lived with other family members or inhabited abandoned homes. Many of these homes were dugouts.

Cellar-type dugout 

Mother told me numerous tales of life in such dwellings and didn’t seem nearly as enamored of them as some pioneers. I used a few of these in my book To Have And To Hold, which will be released in e-book format on January 24^th. One has to do with 7” long centipedes that managed to find their way down onto the newspaper Grandmother tacked onto the ceiling to keep out some of the dirt. The sound of their feet scratching on the paper drove Grandfather crazy. Mother’s complaint, besides the dirt, was snakes. She hated it when her mother asked her to fetch wood from the wood box because too often a resident rattler would be hiding inside. Of course, snakes liked nice warm beds too, and the pallets laid on the floor where the children slept were very convenient. Frankly, I’m glad it was my mother and not me who had these experiences.

Have any of you heard any similar stories from your grandparents or great-grandparents?

Be sure to leave a comment, and include your contact information, for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card and a free copy of To Have And To Hold.

Charlene first serious writing attempt came in 1980 when she awoke one morning from an unusually vivid and compelling dream. Deciding that dream needed to be made into a book, she dug out an old portable typewriter and went to work. That book never sold, but her second one, Tender Touch, became a Golden Heart finalist and earned her an agent. Soon after, she signed a three book contract with Kensington Books. Five of Charlene's western historical romances were published between 1994 and 1999: Taming Jenna, Tender Touch (1994 Golden Heart Finalist under the title Brianna), Forever Mine (1996 Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer's Choice Award Nominee and Affaire de Coeur Reader/Writer Poll finalist), To Have and To Hold (Affaire de Coeur Reader/Writer Poll finalist); and writing as Rachel Summers, The Scent of Roses. Forever Mine and Tender Touch are available as e-books and after January 24, To Have and To Hold will be as well. When not writing, Charlene loves to travel, crochet, needlepoint, research genealogy, scrapbook, and dye Ukrainian eggs.

Find Charlene at:

http://www.charleneraddon.com

http://www.charleneraddon.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/CharleneRaddon?ref=hl

Charlene's e-books on Amazon.com