Hello. Hal again. That’s me in the photo with the load of firewood. When sister Bessie put that in her scrapbook, she titled it “humble equipage.” Even though by then cars and tractors had been around for a couple of decades, I never learned to drive – let sister Ella do that – and never owned a tractor. The old reliable mule, which only ate stuff we grew on the farm, was good enough for me.

The newer right side of this structure was our woodshed. Like so many other buildings on the farm, it was repurposed from some other previous use and moved hee-aa in 1890. We then raised the roofline of the older washhouse building on the left to match the woodshed. This was a handy place, just outside the kitchen door, to store firewood not only the kitchen stove, but also for the stoves in the sitting room and parlors.

The wood came from the north end of the farm near the Sound, and from several woodlots on the south end of the farm along what is now called Herrick’s Lane. We treated these woodlots like the precious things they were – cutting firewood as needed and allowing trees to regrow for future use. Never ran out of fuel!

Now step to the left over to our garage.