For the first 8 years or so of my life, we lived like the people you just described! I was born and raised in the backwoods of NW Pennsylvania in 1954. We lived in a rundown bungalow that was little more than s large shack. Our kitchen had a sink with no running water. Water was obtained via a hand pump in the back yard that needed to be primed prior to each use. Cooking and heating was done by a huge black-iron, flat top stove. There were 8, round removable lids used for sitting pots over an open flame or for cooking on top of the lids. There were doors on the front where wood was fed into it. It kept the kitchen reasonable warm in winter, though you sweltered in the summer. The living room was heat via a coal stove, though most of the heat went up the chimney. There was no bathroom, so a curtain was affixed in front of a space that may have been a hallway closed or pantry. It contained a wooden chair with a hole cut in the seat with s metal, 5 gallon bucket on the floor, under Neath. It contain water and bleach or some other disinfectant. This was for me but my mother and Grandmother used the outhouse situated about 30 ft from the house. Imagine trudging through the snow in -20°F weather to go to the bathroom. Washing up was done at the kitchen sink with water heated on the stove. I got very acclimated to cold weather at a very young age! Finally, when I was in 3rd grade we moved into a house my uncle built for his son and his family. They moved into town and we took there place. It had indoor plumbing, though no hot water. It did have an actual, functioning bathroom! The house was heated by s coal stove and like our earlier one, had no insulation, single-pane windows and linoleum on the floors. Both houses did have electricity, though. I got s bedroom of my own! It was s porch that my uncle enclosed. My wall attached to the house had lap-siding, like the rest of the exterior and in the winter time snow would blow through the gaps in the walls where they met the lap siding. There was no door on the doorway to my room. A heavy eool blanket was hung over it in the winter time to keep the heat from the banked fire in the main parts of the house. I slept under lots of covers! In the summer time the wool blanket was replaced with a thin, gauzey curtain. This was how we lived until my 3rd year in the Navy when my mother passed away. Her mother passed when I was 5. I had 1 year left of my enlistment, but I never returned home when I was released from active duty s year later. It just would never be the same.
At This time my Parents had running Water in the Kitchen, cold of course, and an indoor WC. There was a Well underneath the Cellar with a Hand pump to have access to fresh Water. Her Stove was a big white Monster, heated up by Coal. It had a baking compartment, a place to have a permanent Warm Water Pan. It had rings over the Fireplaces which she removed to have more or less heat. And of course Granddad dried (and then reused) his chewing Tobacco on it. Much to the annoyance of my Mom, since that vile stuff caused dark spots on her otherwise immaculate Oven.
We have neighbors who still live in those conditions. Well with a hand pump outside the house. We ourselves have running water inside, but heat with wood and have a wodk burning cookstove / oven. We aren't connected to the electric grid , so power is extremely limited
I was born and raised in Finland, and I could swear every single older house, cottage, and cabin I have visited in my 25 years in Scandinavia before I emigrated to the U.S. has some form of raised hearth. Pre-1800 (give or take a couple of years), they seem to be about the same height as the seat of a chair, but by the mid- to late 19th Century, most of them had been built about counter-height for the contemporaries (I'm taller, so they're usually hip-height for me), with a baking oven, a hearth with hooks for suspending pots over the fire, and if they could afford it, a small cast iron cooking range insert (In Sweden, surviving ones are often made by Husqvarna, the same company that makes chainsaws today!), and the occasional wood fired water heater, depending a little on the wealth or the lack of it in a household. Another quirk of old Scandinavian kitchens, that I'm not sure I've seen elsewhere, is that the one kitchen/dining table in the house was sometimes constructed with a removable table top, that could be flipped when you were baking, so you had a clean baking surface reserved just for baking, to keep the conditions more sanitary in a day and age when cleanliness was harder to maintain.
Definitely! Look up Brian Shaw (4 time world strongest man) he always gets nicest person on the planet comments too. I'd love to see these 2 guys together in a cooking vid
Imagine how thrilled cooks were when iron stoves came along. That thick heavy range top evening out the heat and externally heated ovens. Must have seemed like a miracle.
I can't believe the youtube bot took over 5 years to recommend this amazing channel to me. Every video is crazy interesting, incredibly well shot, the music makes you instantly happy and the passion of the host for this topic is palpable. I didn't even guess before he said it that water + the sink were the last things missing. You just dont think about stuff like that these days. Drinking water of the highest quality (at least where I live) and the sewer system available 24/7 without any hassle. TH-cam and the world need less petty drama and slinging insults at random strangers, and more appreciation for how good we have it, how we got here, and how we can make it even better. Thank you James Townsend (& Son)!
This makes incredible sense to me. My grandmother lives in a house built in 1928. She has no counters; she has a huge pantry (huge- like I put a bed and bookcase in there and lived though college.) She has a massive back porch with odd hooks that I used to play with as a kid. This make more sense now....
Jon, my aunt and uncle lived on a farm in the mountains of Alabama until I was 16. While on the farm, they had no running water or bathrooms in the house. She did have a sink that drained into a 55 gallon barrel that they used as a grey-water holder for her kitchen garden. There was electricity, 1 bulb in every ceiling, a very small electric fridge. We "lived" for the most part in the large kitchen, around a very large solid table, which was also the work surface. She had no cabinets, but had a dresser which she used for her silverware, household towels and such. She had a walk-in pantry, fairly large (the high chair was stored in there, along with 50 pounds of flour and sugar and maybe 25 pounds of cornmeal. Plus her canned products for her family of 7. She also had a spring house where we sat the gallon jars of milk into the creek on a concrete shelf. We stored the milk, buttermilk and butter there and just kept small amounts in the house. She had no mixers , she used cast iron (I'm blessed to have her #7 dutch oven and lid). 3 bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and "path". It was my favorite place in the world. :-)
Even though living and doing chores was more laborious and time consuming, it was a slower paced simpler world without all the noise, distraction and rushing around of modern day life. It had it's own rewards of that way of country living. It would be no wonder one could sleep so well to rise again before the sun. Getting dirty, working hard in honest labor brings it's own peace.
@Joyce Judd - You've almost "painted a picture" of the house I was born in and still lived in until I got married at 18!! My parents were poor, they/we lived in my dad's old homestead but it only had 3 small bedrooms, only cold running water, no bathroom and a coal burning stove as well. They did get a combination wood and oil kitchen stove when I was about 5 (I'm 68,now) and an oil burning heater/stove in the 'sitting-room' which helped to heat the house on cold days & nights. I'm grateful for ALL the 'modern conveniences' I have because I KNOW what it was like, for us, living in the mid 1900's! ;-)
My grandmother, who died in the 80's, still cooked on the floor, with fire, sitting on a very low stool. She stoped using the wood/coal stove because she didn't bake bread anymore, but I remember that the food had a wonderful taste. Nothing cooked with gas or electricity tastes like that. She didn't have electricity, so, no refrigerator.
I have a much healthier respect for those who had to cook/bake under those conditions. One of my aunts is still alive at 104 and she, in her care facility, is allowed to bake bread, which she does every single day, as she has done all her life. She began by baking bread in a coal stove. When I was growing up (many decades ago now), she had a stove that was half-and-half. She could either use the coal stove side or the other. It was two complete and separate units combined. I've never seen one other than in her kitchen. By the time I was a young teen she had that in her kitchen as a "souvenir" of sorts. She didn't use it any more; she had a modern day device that she cooked and baked with. The bread she baked was wonderful, hot out of the oven, slathered with butter that melted into the bread. It's one of the most vivid gustatory memories of my childhood.
I have read accounts of pioneer women cooking with buffalo chips. It humorously describes the progressive decrease in concern about hand hygiene as the women struggled to keep the oven stoked while preparing the bread...ending with "out of the chips and back into the bread with nary so much as a dusting". I much prefer this century, myself.
Yokatswan Yup--Thank you for the kind words. It wasn't an idyllic childhood. There were hard times and struggles, too. But, over time, those pale in significance when one considers the overall impact of growing up in a community where a child can feel safe, secure, and loved. We would do well to provide that for children today.
Barbara Danley--As unsanitary as that might have been (and I must admit, the thought of parasites from the buffalo chips (today, most kids would think that's a packaged, barbecue-flavored, fried potato slice) entering bread makes my gorge rise==apologies to The Bard and Prince Hamlet) until I realized that the baking process would have killed anything that managed to survive the trip from chip to lip.
I have cooked on a wood stove. The advantage of that, over an oven like in the video, is that you can keep the fire stoked while your bread was baking. So it doesn't just get cooler and cooler like John's kitchen.
If it's electric, that's because it doesn't change the current running through it. It just varies how long it stays on as it alternates on and off to add more or less heat. Terrible system for consistency.
And the water is DRINKABLE. All of it. Even the stuff we wash our dishes and ourselves in -- all safe and drinkable. When you really think about it, that's insane luxury even in many parts of the world today.
+ Janis Cortese "And the water is DRINKABLE. ...all safe and drinkable." Tell that to the people of Flint, Michigan; Hinkley, California; Walkerton, Ontario...
That really depends on when and where. Towns in the 18th century still created chemical pollutants. Tanneries, metal working, (iron, silver, gold, LEAD), hatters, textile processing (dying, processing wool, fur, and other natural fibers) these used chemical processes even in the 1700's. You did not want to be downstream of a lot of different trades. That said, we should always strive to do a better job of taking care of our environment so... I the spirit of the comment is still valid.
When I was a kid my aunt and uncle had a farm in Arkansas we visited many times. They had a wood stove and a hand pump at the kitchen sink. Bath in a #3 tub or the creek. Polk County, Arkansas.
I grew up in rural north Georgia in the late 40s and 50s. We carried water from a well or spring, cooked on a wood fired stove (part of the time until we got an electric stove), same with using an icebox. We had an out house and bathed in a wash tub. I was in the 5th grade before I went to a school with indoor plumbing. Yet I never felt poor, we always had plenty to eat and a warm home.
Some friends of our troops scoutmaster owned an old farm, no indoor plumbing, just a hand pump over a kitchen basin and potbelly stove in a center room on the 1st floor for heat. I had many good times there as a kid, sledding down the hills in the winter, roaming the woods, rabbit and pheasant hunting, gathering around the potbelly stove for warmth first thing on a cold winter's morning. It's shame that people are completely lost now when the power goes out. I still keep a camping stove, a percolator coffee pot, and plenty of gas and oil lanterns on hand for outages, I am content.
My great great grandma had stream water in the cabin she grew up in in Oregon. It came in through the wall around waist level and went into a long wooden trough, miniature aqueduct sort of thing, then flowed out through the other wall. This was the 1890s I believe
A member of the church I attend, who was born in the 1920's in the hills of Virginia, told me her chore as a child was to carry water from the spring to the house several times a day. She said that when the family got a pump in the front yard it was like heaven.
YT4Me57 wow! My grandfather had the exact same chore and his family got a pump when he was 21! I'm not from the states though, I'm from the deep southern isles.
Standa Eik in certain ranch areas in Mexico you have a water tank on the roof I think 100 gallons or more they are fed by a main line but at a certain hour during the day but sometimes the main line would be down for a couple days or longer so they haul water from a well with barrels and pickups
In mexico it was a lil different matters on the area somtimes it was cut down a cactus or go dig a hole to get to a water source what my granma told me (never got a pump
I love this 'common people history'. Too often all we hear about history are kings and battles and monuments. It's gratifying to get a sense of how challenging family life was in those times.
My paternal grandparents didnt have electricity until 1960, indoor plumbing 1969. We had an old red hand pump in the kitchen. The original barn (1880s), was a chicken coop and feed storage, with a hog wallow built from split rails surrounding it. I have pictures of me and my older sister standing in the barn doorway. It's all gone now.
People say electricity or gas was the best indoor innovations......I say NO. Indoor plumbing was/is. Reason is........when it is very cold outside, I don't want to crap in a pot in my room ( little own what to wipe with or how to wash your hands) and then have to empty it in the morning. Even if it is warm out...who wants to go out to a little shack in the back yard to take a dump at 3 o'clock in the morning? No No No............I will take plumbing any day over the other "modern" things. Hot and cold running water......nice satisfying dump at 5 in the morning without having to put boots on warm running water to wash with cook with etc. I can light candles or lamps no problem but.........gotta have the throne :)
Ya, imagine having a case of diarrhea, as we all have had at some point in out lives, with no plumbing. Please, please God, take back electricity and gas and give us plumbing lol.
WW Suwannee, I agree, so we went with the Humanure indoor outhouse method:) Here's a link to the free pdf file so you may never have to go out at 3am ever again, enjoy! humanurehandbook.com/downloads/H2.pdf
my father grew up like that. he use to tease me when we went to my grandmother's that I had to watch out for the black widows that lingered under the seat. something about a part of my anatomy swelling up to the size and color of a ripe eggplant. I never once sat down
The other reason for turning things upside down is dust. I guarantee everyone had dust in those days, the houses were hardly as draft proof or dirt proof as they are today. Living out on the far SE plains of Colorado, we still always turn things upside down in cabinets because of dust.
"Sweet Lord of Mercy!", as my GranMa Edna used to say. For her, an inconvenience was something like a broken bone. Childbirth was a miracle. Books were treasures. Life was a gift. The sermon on the Mount of Olives was how she lived. She had many friends. b 1890
Oh... I remember visiting family on the farm in Kansas. Still using an outhouse. So proud to have indoor plumbing...but it was a hand pump on the sink in the kitchen, they still drained into a bucket and used that water for the garden outside. Everything stored underground or in the spring house. Put a meal together of everything they grew on the farm, including the bread from their wheat. Hard work....Everyone up before dawn and asleep by twenty minutes after sundown!
I love this channel! I learn so much from you that I use in my day to day life. I live in a 200+ year old house in Chile and I don't have indoor plumbing or electricity in the house. I heat the water that I bring in on my modern wood burning stove. I agree, keeping the stove/oven at a a constant temperature is an art, and I haven't mastered it yet! I'm not complaining, I love my simple off-grid life.
When we lived in the interior of Alaska we cooked by lamplite when to cold to use propane. I was fortunate to have a wood range and cook coffee there. Nothing like a heavy enameled pot with basket for coffee to perk. We hauled water, melted snow for cleaning, washing clothes & bathing. And I learned the term Over a Hot Stove when I boiled the whites so they'd be very clean.
My grandmother (born 1894) learned to cook in a fireplace. She described the cast iron pot hanging over the fire. Later, the family had a potbelly stove. I guess that was pure luxury. As a child, it was so difficult for me to envision a world without indoor running water, electricity (for lighting, fans and television, lol) and indoor toilets. Back in the 90's, an elderly cousin of mine (in Virginia) pointed with pride to the bathroom her father had built on the side porch. I remember how stunned I was when my parents sent me to a stay away camp that didn't have indoor toilets, only outhouses. I thought I'd been forced to live in the dark ages!
My father-in-law grew up in a house with a coal-fired stove and just a pump at the sink for water. They used an outhouse and heated up water in a giant tin bath in front of the stove in the kitchen for their weekly baths. This was in the 1940s-50s in Alabama. They never even ate loaf bread, just biscuits and corn bread.
I guess in the US fuel was more plentiful than in europe but I'm pretty sure that open fireplaces stopped beeing commen in the mid 19 hundreds and were replaced by fully enclosed fireplaces because they burned about half as much fuel.
Europe as so crowded even by the 1600s that wood simply wasn't available to burn. In fact, coffins were simply forms with no top or bottom, and you were only buried long enough for the flesh to rot off the bones, and you were dug up, and your bone stored in a carnal house. Poor Yorick was dug up deliberately, and Juliette went to a carnal house to wait for Romeo. Anyway, enclosed stoves were more common on the continent, simply because America didn't need to conserve wood as much.
Wonderful. I live in an 18th house. Have been without refrigator for 9 years and do not miss it. My kitchen range, wood fired is a huge improvement on the 18th. cent. In winter it cooks all my food.
I know this an old video but i will give my point here (long post): Well....I'm the 90's generation. So, in regard of comment section, I can say i had the confort i needed when i was living with my mother. My father was living in a house his father build almost 100 years. Some parts of the house were probably built in the XVIIIe century cause of the wall thickness. I can tell you that the house i was playing and working in whenever i came in (during summer hollydays) the house was old; The walls were plastered, worn, there were cracks, holes in the ceilings. The kitchen tiles ground were from the early 20th century, white and red colours with cracks, dusts, holes. There was this stove: 4 spots each consisting of 4 concentric rings. 1 small spot, 1 medium, 1 slightly larger and 1 very large. With the poker you had to remove the cover and one or more rings depending on the amount of wood you want to add. There was this other place to open the hatch to evacuate the smoke I think. There was the big black pipe connected to the chimney on the roof. This stove consisted of a bread oven and a tank to heat the water and evacuate via a tap. I also remember this little door on the front of the stove to remove the drawer containing the ash. When I opened this little door, there was some sort of thick cast iron grate or whatever I could watch the crackling fire through, and the glowing ash falling in the ash pan. I was squatting and watching this burning spectacle for long minutes. This kind of stove dating from the late nineteenth century - early twentieth century was cast iron, steel, the facades were ceramic. For the materials I say that from memory ^^. 12m², it was not super large for a kitchen, it must be said there was always a mess on the table so to prepare the meal on it was impossible xD There was a piece of furniture, a cupboard and a sink. This sink was dirty, yellowed, the ceramic was damaged in some places. An old cupboard under the sink similar to the one in the video. Next to the sink, there was small storage and a drawer for some kitchen utensils, and next to the cupboard, the most important: the cache for the bottles of wine. On the wall on which the sink was supported, there were tiles, also cracked in some places strangely ^^. Shelves and a fridge. The kitchen seemed more modern with its TV but for hot water you had to heat the water on the cook in a kettle. I also remembered having to take my bath in a large basin. Wash my hair in the garden and drain the water into the disgusting gutter where there was so much rubbish that it looked like the river Ganges. In the kitchen the creamy burnt yellow walls were dull, with cracks, cobwebs, spiders and mice xD Why I'm telling you this: Going from modernity (apartment when I lived with my mother) to my father's old house, which threatened to collapse with electrical outlets from the 1940s, was not always synonyme of comfort ^^. There was also this barrel of water that was filtered to recover and use it to clean the dishes. I was complaining about this when I was young but now, with the consumerist world, I regret this time. That same time when I was crushing the currant in a large bowl with my feet in the cellar to manufacture various alcohols ( Cider, rhubarb, redcurrant, brandy). I'm not going to describe the entire property, but in many ways, the life my father and grandfather had was not that much different from the people of the 18th century. In 1920, there was no freezer or fridge in France. I know that the Americans were ahead in their time unlike us. However, we were food independent. Since the house has been rebuilt, everything is modern, the barnyard is empty, the cellar with its press has disappeared. When I see your videos, it makes me want to do gastronomic reenactment. For me, the kitchen, the utensils, the materials of the tools that I use to cook, the fresh products, the colours and the flavours as well as the design of the kitchen are as important as preparing dinner. I live in an apartment, very nice but the kitchen is as big as a cupboard for pygmies. xD Sorry for the long post but that's a glimpse of life I had and i will probably never have.
Now i know why tropical places like Indian subcontinent and East Asian were big civilization cradles. Having weather on your side helps in so many ways. Food source throughout the year, outdoor kitchen, outdoor bathroom, usable water without having to heat it, not having to regulate temperature inside home, laundry by riverside ,washing dishes by riverside.
I smiled when you mentioned spring houses. We have spring houses scattered on old land here in the mountains of West Virginia. It was such a thrill going inside one for the first time! The water from the spring was still flowing, still cold, and old plates and circular-hewn rocks were in the trough, no longer needed to keep critters out of milk crocks! Love your videos and thank you for sharing!
One important thing you missed are the food preservation techniques used in addition to refrigerating. They used to preserve a great deal of seasonally available food items by drying, pickling, fermenting, jamming and salting. You needed to plan ahead for months what you were planning to eat, since there wouldn't have been much available in the winter. There would have been jars, barrels and canisters of all kinds of obscure stuff all around, especially in a German household.
The family farm in Ohio was established in the 1820’s as a kid I spent summers there and the ice box,wood cookstove with the hot water tank on the side and the hand water pump in the kitchen, There was also a large cistern in the side yard and the root cellar accessible from the basement. That brings back fond memories but the outhouse, not so fond!
I got a little taste of that about a year ago when I spent a summer in Alaska visiting my son and his family. They live in what there is called a dry cabin.They actually have a stove(propane) and electricity but no running water. Most of the people in the little settlement of Kenny Lake stil luse outhouses and a village well. Many or Most of the people go fill up a tank of water in the back of their pickup or on a traile maybe once a week or so. My son and his wife do most of their cooking outside on an open fire during the summer. Everybody gets a turn at lighting the fire each day and getting the big pot of wash water on every morning. I was really impressed at what delicious food was prepared on a daily basis. I enjoy Dutch oven cooking and was able to participate in the outdoor cookery by cooking my signature chilli ( incidentaly it has no beans in it it uses Homminy) Thanks for your wonderful videos I watch these in preference to television programing.
Gary Morse Cool! I grew up near there! We also had a dry place, for electricity Dad got a Subaru with a bad transmission and hooked up the engine to the house as a generator. We had to make water runs to the water point near the Kenny lake library.
You have the best channel on TH-cam, and this is such a great video for understanding kitchens of the past. I was once in rural China a few years ago in a small mountain village where I stayed with a woman who had a kitchen like this. No running water, and using wood strips for fuel. The only modern thing there was a metal chimney. I could not believe the speed and skill that she had. She cranked out different dishes and breads so fast with it, and controlled the temperatures perfectly all along. I think skill is a major component of premodern kitchens. It's probably like speaking another language, no matter how much we learn, we still usually end up with an accent.
I WAS BORN IN 1947. WE HAD AN ICE BOX UNTIL I WAS 4 OR 5. I WAS 5 YRS. OLD WHEN WE GOT AN INDOOR BATHROOM. WE HAD OUT HOUSES UNTIL THEN. GLAD TO BE ALIVE IN THIS CENTURY..
That's the year I was born, also. We lived in the country 13 miles from town, 2.5 miles from neighbors, had a phone but no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. We had a wonderful spring for our water and used the creek for a fridge, by putting a metal box into the overflow from the spring. I learned to cook on a wood burning stove, and still have a small heating stove in my home that I can cook on if electric goes out because of storms, which has happened a few times. We got a gas range after a bit and used that in the summer, as canning on a wood stove was miserable. You had to carefully move the canner around a bit to keep the pressure regulated. We got electricity in the late 50's and had 1 light fixture and 1 outlet at first. Cash was in short supply and the house had not been wired when it was built. Running water and indoor plumbing came in the 60's. For a long time Mom had a gas engine on the wringer washer, and we had 6 very long clotheslines which we filled at least twice every washday. Water was hauled from the spring to a tub on top of an upturned oil drum which was made into a stove to heat the water, then it was bucketed into the washer. We raised a huge garden, there were 2 children in the family when my parents bought the place and the other six of us came along in the next 18 years. We raised chickens, got milk from the neighbors, and had lots of chores. It sounds like a hard way to live, but we never really felt that way, that's just how it was. One of my brothers and I were talking, long after we were all grown and away from there, and he laughed and said, "We were forced to eat gourmet food!" We ate lots of wild game, the men hunted in season and fished often. It was a wonderful way to grow up. Cash poor but love rich.Mom lived on the farm until 2001 and she was 88. She spent winters away from there, for about 8 years, mostly living with my husband and me, just 100 miles away. And heated with wood all the time she lived there.
My uncle's house on our family land had a box with a toilet seat on top floating over a hole around back. That was the only place to poop on our land until about 15 or 20 years ago. Gotta love the hillbilly side of my family
We are going backwards on this farm, lol. There's a wood stove to heat the house and cook on, there's a Humanure toilet and we hauled water up until 8 years ago. We now have hot & cold running water that I never take for granted and a garden that doesn't need watering even in drought conditions due to mulching. We could do without electricity, only if we have to. But we love our lifestyle even though it's inconvenient at times. Living with all the amenities is not something we would do again and I highly recommend this lifestyle to anyone who's thinking about it as it's very rewarding, go figure, lol.
I was born in 1959. I remember visiting relatives who still had an outhouse when I was 9. I remember my dad got up one night and watched me from the kitchen door as I went outside to use the outhouse so I wouldn't be scared.
Homestead Dreaming, that was awesome of your Dad to keep an eye on you, he took some of the scariness away and was there to save you:). Amazing how outhouses leave such long lasting memories! I had thoughts of being attacked by animals or falling into the hole, lol. After decades I still don't like outhouses due to those walks in the dark & dark holes, so our in-house Humanure toilet is absolulte heaven:) Atb.
Love this channel. In Norway we have something called a "stabbur" it was one on every farm, to keep the food safe. Thick walls and and a turf roof, kept it cool in summer. The food had to tolerate low temperatures as well, as there is no fireplace in a stabbur. A fun fact, it only had one key, and the mistress of the farm had it in her belt. A stabbur is a small log structure, built on stilts or pillars of wood or stone, preventing mice and other rodents from finding their way in. For that reason there would be a gap between the outside stairs and the building itself.
Great video John. My country property is on 120 acres and a few things have broken recently. Our water pump (which pumps river water into a tank for the house) broke so we've resorted to bringing water in by buckets. And also we've run out of gas. So we heat our water over the wood fire for bathing and cooking. It definitely is an inconvenience at times but it's also quite a nice thing to really watch how much water we use on a daily basis. Sure makes me more careful with what I'm doing.
dashn64 Couple yrs ago our well pump went out. Hand pumped,that we made out of pvc, about 75-100gal a day 100 ft well for 8months. Laundry days more. This was mostly over Southern California summer, so had to be done before too hot or done at night.
Was just thinking about turning off our hot water heater. every time some people wash dish's they run the hot water constantly. take's them 30 min or more to do them. drives me nut.
Great video! Just in time for Thanksgiving. I certainly take things for granted until I don't have them. Living in Florida we recently had a BIG reminder of the ease in living with water, toilets, showers, sink, stove, refrigerator, and lights. We were cooking outside on a grill, jumping in the pool for getting clean and cool, candles for lights and NO social media! The kids were bored out of their minds until we played games huddled together with a big flashlight, talked, laughed, and when the electric finally came on days later, the kids asked when we could do it again. Friends and family were key in making it enjoyable. That and having pool water to use for flushing - vitally important! We are so blessed.
I can imagine how terrifying it would be for someone from the 18th century to walk into a modern home. I'm trying to further myself in the culinary arts and I love to watch your content to understand the history of cooking, recipes, tools etc. I always complain about the size of my kitchen but after seeing this I've come to appreciate what I do have. Thanks for making these videos!
thanks for this tour, I have been engulfed in 18th and 19th Century cooking ever since reading "A Christmas Carol" and this video is Heaven. I'd really like to see a Christmas Dinner cooked as the Cratchits may have had theirs done. perhaps a little early in the era but if possible it would be great.
I did my economic history masters in log houses in Finland, and I love watching these videos and compare the differences in Northern American traditions to Northern European. Thank you for quality content! Greetings from Finland!
I find very curious the idea of cooking on what is basically a ceramic table, I'm from Brazil and here what was traditionally used before gas became a thing was basically a trench made by two thick walls made of clay/mud on top of a table or base of the same construction, you would burn the wood between the walls and forming a roof usually was a cast iron plate with holes for the fire to hit the pans directly. As far as I know that kind of mud trench stove was used all the way from the XVI century to when gas became the norm, in rural areas that was only in the 1960's, and in the little ranch my mother have just out of town she still have one of those mud stoves (fogão de lenha we call it in portuguese).
I wonder if a couple of bricks, in the back of the oven, would help it maintain its temp. It's a trick used in modern ovens too. Put the bricks in there while it's heating up and leave them in there when you put the food inside.
There is another really good couple of reasons for turning your cups,bowls etc upside down. One is dust and the other is if you live in a cold climate and you have washed the bowls etc you can put them upside down and any residule moisture will make it's way out of the cup etc and when you pick it up it'll mostlikely be totally dry. This helps to stop bad stuff growing in it and it's better than having a wet mug etc.
One of the things I love about going camping is experiencing these challenges. It makes me very grateful for the things most of us take for granted, especially indoor plumbing. While I truly enjoy cooking over an open wood fire, and the great smell it leaves in my clothes, it would get tedious if I had to do it every day for every meal.
I've been living without running water for 8.5 years now, transferring from a rainwater cistern in 30 gal batches of 2.5 gal jugs to bring inside as needed, and yeah - it's everything John said. And more. What it's not at all is fun. And one of the major reasons I'm selling my place up in the hills and moving back to semi-civilization.
bobobobinalong uuuugggg... for the international audience, I think that's about 12 litres... so 15 trips for your 30 gallons.. Watch your back though. :-)
Well, you've proved you're a winterer, bobo, so you've earned the right to detest the life. I love everything but hauling water. And washing dishes by hand (no dishwasher). Where are you thinking of taking up residence now? I live in Spokane at the moment, but I dream of life outside of civilization-- if you want to call it that.
Been off grid for 10 yrs We raised two children and thrive. Huge fresh garden zone 4b. An average 3 milk cows to haul water, feed & manure for. Beef cows, chickens & hogs.. and we choose to do it every day.
Most English houses had a larder for meat and game.. It was a room on the north side of the separate kitchen building, with a stone floor and thick brick walls. Ice gathered in the winter was used to help keep larders cool in summer. Smoking, salting and drying was used to preserve meats and fish. Dining was usually in the mid to late afternoon.
you should see a typical Philippine kitchen John. same as yours but a bit more rustic. i'll try and send some photos on my mext visit. In many countries they still cook this same way. And yes, the whole house fills with somke. But the food is amazing. Same as revitalizing tbe 18th century. Everything is cooked over a fire. Personally, I love it!
This is likely a holdover from earlier times, but I learned to at least turn glasses over when putting them away from my grandfather (through my mom). The logic I was presented was that dust and other debris could settle in an upturned cup, which could contaminate a drink. Oddly enough, I was brought up to only apply this to cups, since I store everything else facing up, but it's fascinating to see the potential origins of this line of thought.
One enormous benefit of a waist-height hearth is safety. You're unlikely to catch the hem of your skirt in the fire if the fire is up high. And your little kids tend not to be able to fall into the flames. And maybe it's easier to ventilate, to remove the smoke.
Thank you for this episode. My grandmother, born in 1900 in rural south Alabama cooked on a wood stove, her mom on open hearth in her early cooking days. I grew up hearing her stories of the difficulties of cooking--rspecially of keeping wood chopped in appropriate sizes the fire going at the correct temoerature--and even of making the soap to clean and wash with. You help make us mindful of our blessings! Thanks again!
Great insight Jon! Modern life is definitely alot easier now a days! During Hunting season I still make breakfast by lantern outside over the fire! I love it!
Depends Sometimes its a skillet breakfast with onions bell peppers potatoes sausage and egg and cheese mixed all together, or biscuits and gravy .coffee always! Some times bacon and hash browns and gravy.
Old fashioned campfire food! As for me, I'd probably be making eggs and veggies or maybe hash browns. I'll leave the sausage for others....just remembered FLAPJACKS ;)
max larsen funny. i love to cook a lot,but if i was brought back in time to the 18th century i think.I'll lose interest in cooking.. I'd probably just give up in life and die from starvation or.something
I saw once, I don’t remember where, a picture of a cupboard with wire shelves and a wire bottom open to the cellar. The cold air came up thru to keep food cold.
Awesome video, loved it! I'm myself a historical reenactor (late-medieval period, central Europe) and I'm particularily fond of historical cooking. My house is a quite old building from the first half of 19th century and we decided to keep our kitchen as old-style as possible, perhaps not as old as the 1700's, but definitely Victorian ;) We have a large tiled stove for cooking, with a built-in cast iron oven. I also prefer hand-made pottery, baskets and stoneware for storing my food over modern plastic containers. Of course we do have a fridge, electric lights and most of the modern appliances, but I still prefer to use basic hand utensils. Is cooking in that way more time-consuming? Sure it is, but it also makes you appreciate the food that ends up on your table a lot more and plan your meals with greater care. Cheers from a fellow reenactor! Keep up the good work :)
I'm jealous. We had an old home too, built in 1904, and our kitchen never worked for us. We since moved and our new kitchen is from the 1990's. I'd love to update it to make it old. Lol
I realized how much I took for granted growing up in America, when I moved to Thailand. People here do not have hot running water in their kitchens, and most don't have hot water in their showers, unless they purchase small heaters for their showers. Most Thai people still don't have toilets like we are used to in America, and still use squat toilets. And most people here hand wash their dishes (including me!) and many do it outside their homes on the ground. It was a huge eye opener when I came here in 2011, and I'm still amazed at how different things are still.
We were amazed to see how many live in Thailand. I photographed a couple kitchens our tour guide took us to. The cooking on the floor with the soot just going up the wall. One actually had a cement sink, again floor height. No table or chairs. The had a matt on the floor.
think about it. few invention in the history of mankind have elevated living conditions, accelerated the progress of society and saved as many lives as indoor plumbing.
Thanks so much for sharing!! I started out the video thinking, "OH! Their kitchen's not much different from ours!!" Little did I know. I could not imagine not washing my dishes, having everything taste like smoke or having to stoop down to cook on a low hearth. Not to mention the pest issues. . . . uggghhh. . . Our modern kitchens are pretty amazing by comparison. Thanks again for sharing!!
You can still wash your dishes. Why do you think they kept a big pot of hot water over the fire? Take some boiling hot water with a dipper, and put it in the wash basin. Add cold water to get the right temperature. Shave some soap into the water, and wash your dishes. Then throw the dirty water out the back door. Yes they worked hard in those days, to do things that come easy to us. As for the mice that is why you see a cat in the old pictures.
My mother grew up in a farmhouse in Ireland in the 1940s. It had a hearth and no running water like in your video. I believe they finally got a range in the 1950s. They smoked their bacon (you would call it gammon) up the chimney.
You talk about having to fuss with the fire all the time to cook in the 18th century, two things. 1. I live on the road and cook either with my rocket stove or over an open fire. I don't fuss, I don't worry about temperature changes, why? Because I cook according to my kitchen, I flash fry or I slow cook, (yeah, I bake etc) but wasting time trying to adjust temperature is neither productive and is futile, I'm pretty sure that over a day to day existence, it was the same back then, there were more important jobs to be dealing with. 2.On occasion, I will go the route of some fancy cooking, that is when the rocket stove takes over, I have a modicum of control over heat, but these times are the days which I set aside for my cooking. I have also cooked over brick built wood fired stoves, temp control is down to pot/pan placement, the stove doubled as a heathing source with the chimney running out through adjoining rooms before exiting the house, even then it could be adjusted for the hotter summer months. I had a constant supply of hot water, through a large pot, sat at the back of the stove, no point in wasting heat. So, although I don't doubt things were different in the US inb the 18th century, I'm opretty sure that they wouyld have gone for the simpler route of cooking to the fire, not adjusting the fire to cooking. All the same, interesting video, I'm just rebuilding my camp and waggon, so it is a great source of ideas and tips!
My mom grew up in Puerto Rico she's now in her 80s but I still to this day store all my dishes upside down even though technically there is no need to but that's how she taught us.
Aside from the errant bug, it's actually good for keeping dust out of dishes you don't use much. I don't turn something like a stack of cereal bowls upside-down, but mugs and glasses I don't use much are definitely kept upside-down.
This was interesting! My grandmother lived in what used to be an old school building, and the kitchen there did have some modern conveniences installed later, but my grandmother also had the old cooking surfaces and the large bread oven - all wood fire fuelled. A step up from the kitchen being shown here (the fire was put inside a fireplace below the stovetop), but still quite old and interesting. She still actively used all those, for cooking. She also did have a fridge, but also used the old pantry, which was a separate room next to the kitchen that was well insulated and actually was always a bit cooler than the rest of the house. She also had a cellar that stayed pretty cool, where she also stored food stuffs and drinks that didn't need to be kept very cold. (and a modern convenience - a freezer box, too). She did a lot of cooking, and had a vegetable garden, and a hot house, and bushes with different berries - she got pretty much everything but meat from her garden and fields.
We are so spoiled by modern plumbing and electricity. Light and heat whenever we like, hot or cold running water on demand. I am old enough to remember visiting my mother's friend's parents in Cape Breton. They had a lovely white enameled wood burning stove in the front sitting room, which had originally been the kitchen. When electricity became available in the area, the family had a small galley modern kitchen built off of the original kitchen. A plumbed in sink, an electric stove, a fridge, lighting. And with the electricity came a link up to a modern sewage system!!! An indoor bathroom with toilet and bathtub!! But I remember being a youngster, sitting with my "surrogate" grandparents in that former kitchen, with that wood stove creating a lovely warmth in the house. At that point, the wood stove wasn't used for cooking any more, but it was used to keep food warm. The father of the house chopped wood for that stove everyday of his life. At 83, he was out chopping kindling, he was struck down with an aneurysm that could have taken him down at any time in his life. I have lovely memories of that room.
I'm very sorry for your loss, but thank you for that beautiful story. I've had similar experiences and I felt like I was there in that home. It was really peaceful
I remember in the early 1960's my grand mother had a wood stove converted to gas in Newark. I think in the late 18th century city people were starting to use those cast iron wood stoves with built in ovens thanks to people like Ben Franklin.
+ Robert Schuster -- The Franklin Stove was a space heater, not a cookstove. The internal baffle design heated the air and directed it into the room, while also creating less smoke than a standard fireplace. It was a different Benjamin -- Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford -- who is credited with designing the earliest purpose-built cookstoves, although his were masonry, not metal. Cast iron stoves became more common in the 1820s, and it was in the late 19th century that the "modern" freestanding metal woodstove made its appearance in the kitchen; that kind can still be purchased today.
Franklin was one of many stove designers and the wood burning stove goes back to the 16th century in Germany. Today most people use a "Franklin" stove for heating but they are quite capable for cooking on the top but mostly when you say cast iron stoves people think of Franklin stoves. My grandmother had a wood burning stove/oven from the 1800's that could burn wood or coal before being converted to gas. The fire box was on the left side with the oven to the right.
I like the section on indoor plumbing. An amazing blessing. When we go camping I haul water in buckets from a spigot about 50 yards away, and use that water for cooking and dishes. Much easier at home with my sink.
we are not totally off grid but, power is limitted...we are in a converted former country general store and post office that we renovated into a cabin home; the original section from 1930(that's old for in the north where we are) was log construction(later sided over with shiplap)...anyhow we are not plumbed but, have plumbing in another building next door...so I haul water for dishes and empty it when done...we heat with an antique wood cookstove in winter...and though I do have some countertop kitchen appliances(hot plate, slow cooker for example) we are cooking and baking on/in the wood cookstove. It's not so bad really and I have gone without electricity or plumbing in past on a remote homestead and this is much easier of course but...yeah cooking is more time consuming because you have to get the oven temperature where you want it...and keep it steady etc...but it bakes really nice.
Not sure how I came across this channel but my gosh, I'm so glad I did. What you all do and the lengths you take to stay authentic at Townsends is amazing. This is what TH-cam is for me and why I left traditional television. Such unique content available.
I still turn my stuff upside down, but not cause of rodents, but 1 so dishes with a little water after the wash can drain out (have that rubber mat mesh stuff then under it shelf liner) and 2 dust ... we dont use a lot of dishes constantly so things can sit in a cabinet for periods of time
I attended an 18th-century cooking seminar at Fort Klock in upstate New York about 10 years or so ago. We made Lumpen und Fleeh (pork and cabbage with cumin seeds), Palatine Egg Puff, Pumpkin and Apples, Sausages (which we stuffed ourselves), Carett Pudding, Pot Supper, and several other dishes, all cooked on a floor-level hearth. We also baked bread in an outdoor oven, using cabbage leaves to protect the bottom of the loaves from ashes. It was a lot of fun, and we ate all day!!
Your dedication to history and teaching are so inspiring. When i was homeschooling my son I would watch your show with him. It inspired him to learn about American history and entertained him. I wish that watching your videos were part of the public school system.
The temperature drop may be beneficial for baking. Most of the heat is needed at the beginning for rise. And you don't want the crust to form to fast. So, dropping may help it cook in some ways easier than a consistant oven.
Late to the party here (but loving every minute)... This is my new fave Townsends video. So many people have so little appreciation for the wonderful amenities we have in the modern world. I often think about how difficult life was in the past - this really showcased it quite well. Thank you!!
This was a very, very good video. You struck a chord with me when you got to the part about water. We take it for granted, but my (grown) son recently went to Haiti as a volunteer to help drill a clean water well with a group called Living Water. He described the conditions he encountered there, generally no electricity, no municipal water, etc, and right here in our own hemisphere we have folks living in what approximates the 18th century. When there is a thunderstorm that knocks out our electricity for 30-45 minutes, it makes you realize that it is indeed a 21st century first world problem. Thanks as always for the content, and I can only give one thumbs up (but I wish I could multiply it by a thousand.)
@@katiebayliss9887 Hospitals and nursing homes have back-up generators. People who use electrically powered oxygen pumps and the like at home know to go to a hospital.
Another great video. And the comment section is just as good. People sharing their life experiences and their family history peace and blessings to all who pass by here
Back then, IF people bathed, they set up a "bathtub" in the kitchen. Don't forget, the privy was truly, and "out house." ¶Some who were more wealthy also had an ice house, lined with wood and stuffed with saw-dust as insulation. The ice was cut from lakes, rivers and ponds in the winter, and placed in the ice house for cold storage.
My dad's side used to cut the ice from a widened pond next to the house. I saw the old ice shed before it rotted away. Now it's just bramble weeds & berries.
We turn some of our dishes upside down; jars, mugs, and glasses primarily. We do it to keep dust out of the things, especially for storing canning jars.
@Klausbärbel Fömm I agree with you that those are all great modern things that we can enjoy today, like I said there's pros and cons in any generation 😊
I absolutely love to learn all of these details. I've wondered endlessly about this information since childhood, so thank you so much! Also, you seem to be the nicest person...and it's comforting just listen to you and the way you communicate. Just lovely.
I love the fussing. Must mix green w/ dry wood for control. It's an art. I've lived this way & loved it. The only thing I'd want is a hand pump in the kitchen. Hauling water sux! I wish we still lived like this.
I love this. I guess if we ask our parents or grandparents we get similar stories ( I know not exact). I know my mom talked of her grandma firing up the potbelly stove every single morning. She told me they had a cellar. As she got older they eventually got a ice chest. They made soap from the pig fat to wash dishes. Amazing all of it is to me. This is great! What appliance in the kitchen do you think you could not live without?
Having a fridge/freezer is an amazing luxury. It allows for once-a-week, rather than daily shopping. Without a modern kitchen, my husband and I could not both work. I would literally be gathering and preparing food all. Day. Long.
I so agree! The refrigerator allows us to store food. Although I have heard people say cellers work great. The freezer is just plain wonderful! I commute so going to the store daily is almost impossible.
For me, it's the pump in the kitchen. I can do all else no problemo, but hauling water is the worst. As for plumbing, yeah, that's nice too. I'd've used some kind of tubing/piping to run the water out of the kitchen. Showers outside, even in winter. Did that up here in WA state! Invigorating. Like a sauna & cool-off pool all in one!
Wonderful and absolutely fascinating! 1776 just 242 years ago, in the time frame of 1000 years, really NOT that long ago when you LOOK at those numbers! I grew up spending summers in my late grandmothers house built in 1776 on old Cape Cod. It too used to have two fireplaces and a root cellar under the floor boards. My late grandfather renovated the house in the 1930s but even in the 50s and 60s it didn't have any baseboard heating until in the 70s. It had no door knobs and all the doors had black wrought iron latches. Love any old historic houses and have been in many including Orchard House where Little Women was written in Concord MA. I remember seeing 18th century kitchens in Sturbridge MA and also historic Williamsburg VA another thrilling place to visit and travel back to early American history! Thanks for sharing~
this is awesome
I Love U Repzion!!!
What 18th century historical movies would you recommend to watch?
The Duelists by Ridley Scott gotta watch y'all
No good
Repzion i
For the first 8 years or so of my life, we lived like the people you just described!
I was born and raised in the backwoods of NW Pennsylvania in 1954. We lived in a rundown bungalow that was little more than s large shack.
Our kitchen had a sink with no running water. Water was obtained via a hand pump in the back yard that needed to be primed prior to each use. Cooking and heating was done by a huge black-iron, flat top stove. There were 8, round removable lids used for sitting pots over an open flame or for cooking on top of the lids. There were doors on the front where wood was fed into it. It kept the kitchen reasonable warm in winter, though you sweltered in the summer.
The living room was heat via a coal stove, though most of the heat went up the chimney.
There was no bathroom, so a curtain was affixed in front of a space that may have been a hallway closed or pantry. It contained a wooden chair with a hole cut in the seat with s metal, 5 gallon bucket on the floor, under Neath. It contain water and bleach or some other disinfectant. This was for me but my mother and Grandmother used the outhouse situated about 30 ft from the house. Imagine trudging through the snow in -20°F weather to go to the bathroom.
Washing up was done at the kitchen sink with water heated on the stove. I got very acclimated to cold weather at a very young age!
Finally, when I was in 3rd grade we moved into a house my uncle built for his son and his family. They moved into town and we took there place. It had indoor plumbing, though no hot water. It did have an actual, functioning bathroom! The house was heated by s coal stove and like our earlier one, had no insulation, single-pane windows and linoleum on the floors. Both houses did have electricity, though.
I got s bedroom of my own! It was s porch that my uncle enclosed. My wall attached to the house had lap-siding, like the rest of the exterior and in the winter time snow would blow through the gaps in the walls where they met the lap siding. There was no door on the doorway to my room. A heavy eool blanket was hung over it in the winter time to keep the heat from the banked fire in the main parts of the house. I slept under lots of covers!
In the summer time the wool blanket was replaced with a thin, gauzey curtain.
This was how we lived until my 3rd year in the Navy when my mother passed away. Her mother passed when I was 5. I had 1 year left of my enlistment, but I never returned home when I was released from active duty s year later. It just would never be the same.
That's how I lived till age 5 when Dad built a small house closer to school.
Super interesting, thank you for sharing!
At This time my Parents had running Water in the Kitchen, cold of course, and an indoor WC.
There was a Well underneath the Cellar with a Hand pump to have access to fresh Water.
Her Stove was a big white Monster, heated up by Coal. It had a baking compartment, a place to have a permanent Warm Water Pan. It had rings over the Fireplaces which she removed to have more or less heat. And of course Granddad dried (and then reused) his chewing Tobacco on it.
Much to the annoyance of my Mom, since that vile stuff caused dark spots on her otherwise immaculate Oven.
We have neighbors who still live in those conditions. Well with a hand pump outside the house. We ourselves have running water inside, but heat with wood and have a wodk burning cookstove / oven. We aren't connected to the electric grid , so power is extremely limited
You gotta write a BOOK!!!
I was born and raised in Finland, and I could swear every single older house, cottage, and cabin I have visited in my 25 years in Scandinavia before I emigrated to the U.S. has some form of raised hearth. Pre-1800 (give or take a couple of years), they seem to be about the same height as the seat of a chair, but by the mid- to late 19th Century, most of them had been built about counter-height for the contemporaries (I'm taller, so they're usually hip-height for me), with a baking oven, a hearth with hooks for suspending pots over the fire, and if they could afford it, a small cast iron cooking range insert (In Sweden, surviving ones are often made by Husqvarna, the same company that makes chainsaws today!), and the occasional wood fired water heater, depending a little on the wealth or the lack of it in a household.
Another quirk of old Scandinavian kitchens, that I'm not sure I've seen elsewhere, is that the one kitchen/dining table in the house was sometimes constructed with a removable table top, that could be flipped when you were baking, so you had a clean baking surface reserved just for baking, to keep the conditions more sanitary in a day and age when cleanliness was harder to maintain.
This guy seems like the nicest person on the planet. He's the Bob Ross of history
What a lovely compliment!
Holly Harger came here for the history, stayed for the awesome host!
Definitely! Look up Brian Shaw (4 time world strongest man) he always gets nicest person on the planet comments too. I'd love to see these 2 guys together in a cooking vid
He kinda looks like bob ross too just without afro
Omg this is perfect! He’s relaxing and kind and doesn’t talk about stressful real world things (politics/etc)
Imagine how thrilled cooks were when iron stoves came along. That thick heavy range top evening out the heat and externally heated ovens. Must have seemed like a miracle.
I can't believe the youtube bot took over 5 years to recommend this amazing channel to me. Every video is crazy interesting, incredibly well shot, the music makes you instantly happy and the passion of the host for this topic is palpable. I didn't even guess before he said it that water + the sink were the last things missing. You just dont think about stuff like that these days. Drinking water of the highest quality (at least where I live) and the sewer system available 24/7 without any hassle. TH-cam and the world need less petty drama and slinging insults at random strangers, and more appreciation for how good we have it, how we got here, and how we can make it even better. Thank you James Townsend (& Son)!
Yes... I'm a new fan, been looking for the Townsends forever!
I'm so glad I found this!!!!
*TH-cam algorithm
I was thinking the same thing!
This makes incredible sense to me. My grandmother lives in a house built in 1928. She has no counters; she has a huge pantry (huge- like I put a bed and bookcase in there and lived though college.) She has a massive back porch with odd hooks that I used to play with as a kid. This make more sense now....
Jon, my aunt and uncle lived on a farm in the mountains of Alabama until I was 16. While on the farm, they had no running water or bathrooms in the house. She did have a sink that drained into a 55 gallon barrel that they used as a grey-water holder for her kitchen garden. There was electricity, 1 bulb in every ceiling, a very small electric fridge. We "lived" for the most part in the large kitchen, around a very large solid table, which was also the work surface. She had no cabinets, but had a dresser which she used for her silverware, household towels and such. She had a walk-in pantry, fairly large (the high chair was stored in there, along with 50 pounds of flour and sugar and maybe 25 pounds of cornmeal. Plus her canned products for her family of 7. She also had a spring house where we sat the gallon jars of milk into the creek on a concrete shelf. We stored the milk, buttermilk and butter there and just kept small amounts in the house. She had no mixers
, she used cast iron (I'm blessed to have her #7 dutch oven and lid). 3 bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and "path". It was my favorite place in the world. :-)
Joyce Judd
...wish you could visit schools & share these stories!
These experiences are priceless! I can smell the cornbread baking....
Even though living and doing chores was more laborious and time consuming, it was a slower paced simpler world without all the noise, distraction and rushing around of modern day life. It had it's own rewards of that way of country living. It would be no wonder one could sleep so well to rise again before the sun. Getting dirty, working hard in honest labor brings it's own peace.
@Joyce Judd - You've almost "painted a picture" of the house I was born in and still lived in until I got married at 18!! My parents were poor, they/we lived in my dad's old homestead but it only had 3 small bedrooms, only cold running water, no bathroom and a coal burning stove as well. They did get a combination wood and oil kitchen stove when I was about 5 (I'm 68,now) and an oil burning heater/stove in the 'sitting-room' which helped to heat the house on cold days & nights. I'm grateful for ALL the 'modern conveniences' I have because I KNOW what it was like, for us, living in the mid 1900's! ;-)
A wonderful woman! It sounds pretty magical. Just add a bathroom. lol
My grandmother, who died in the 80's, still cooked on the floor, with fire, sitting on a very low stool. She stoped using the wood/coal stove because she didn't bake bread anymore, but I remember that the food had a wonderful taste. Nothing cooked with gas or electricity tastes like that. She didn't have electricity, so, no refrigerator.
I have a much healthier respect for those who had to cook/bake under those conditions. One of my aunts is still alive at 104 and she, in her care facility, is allowed to bake bread, which she does every single day, as she has done all her life. She began by baking bread in a coal stove. When I was growing up (many decades ago now), she had a stove that was half-and-half. She could either use the coal stove side or the other. It was two complete and separate units combined. I've never seen one other than in her kitchen. By the time I was a young teen she had that in her kitchen as a "souvenir" of sorts. She didn't use it any more; she had a modern day device that she cooked and baked with. The bread she baked was wonderful, hot out of the oven, slathered with butter that melted into the bread. It's one of the most vivid gustatory memories of my childhood.
I feel like i was born in the wrong century. What a lovely childhood you had
I have read accounts of pioneer women cooking with buffalo chips. It humorously describes the progressive decrease in concern about hand hygiene as the women struggled to keep the oven stoked while preparing the bread...ending with "out of the chips and back into the bread with nary so much as a dusting".
I much prefer this century, myself.
Yokatswan Yup--Thank you for the kind words. It wasn't an idyllic childhood. There were hard times and struggles, too. But, over time, those pale in significance when one considers the overall impact of growing up in a community where a child can feel safe, secure, and loved. We would do well to provide that for children today.
Barbara Danley--As unsanitary as that might have been (and I must admit, the thought of parasites from the buffalo chips (today, most kids would think that's a packaged, barbecue-flavored, fried potato slice) entering bread makes my gorge rise==apologies to The Bard and Prince Hamlet) until I realized that the baking process would have killed anything that managed to survive the trip from chip to lip.
I have cooked on a wood stove. The advantage of that, over an oven like in the video, is that you can keep the fire stoked while your bread was baking. So it doesn't just get cooler and cooler like John's kitchen.
"Nowadays, we can just set a knob to three and it will be consistent"
You sir, have clearly never met my stove! lol
Mine is consistent, but if you want 3 you have to set it at 5 🤣
Exayevie well yeah but you don’t have to start a fire
@@thetillerwiller4696 Match Lighting is the best. Especially when you need to light the oven pilot light.
If it's electric, that's because it doesn't change the current running through it. It just varies how long it stays on as it alternates on and off to add more or less heat. Terrible system for consistency.
Mine starts at the selected temperature and then decides to get hotter over time.
And the water is DRINKABLE. All of it. Even the stuff we wash our dishes and ourselves in -- all safe and drinkable. When you really think about it, that's insane luxury even in many parts of the world today.
+ Janis Cortese "And the water is DRINKABLE. ...all safe and drinkable."
Tell that to the people of Flint, Michigan; Hinkley, California; Walkerton, Ontario...
Which is why I specified that it's a LUXURY, and one that doesn't exist for many people.
SeikiBrian Let's not forget Marshall, battle Creek and Kalamazoo -- that Enbridge spill.
We wash our cars and flush our toiletd with potable water, too. It's crazy.
That really depends on when and where. Towns in the 18th century still created chemical pollutants. Tanneries, metal working, (iron, silver, gold, LEAD), hatters, textile processing (dying, processing wool, fur, and other natural fibers) these used chemical processes even in the 1700's. You did not want to be downstream of a lot of different trades. That said, we should always strive to do a better job of taking care of our environment so... I the spirit of the comment is still valid.
When I was a kid my aunt and uncle had a farm in Arkansas we visited many times. They had a wood stove and a hand pump at the kitchen sink. Bath in a #3 tub or the creek. Polk County, Arkansas.
I grew up in rural north Georgia in the late 40s and 50s. We carried water from a well or spring, cooked on a wood fired stove (part of the time until we got an electric stove), same with using an icebox. We had an out house and bathed in a wash tub. I was in the 5th grade before I went to a school with indoor plumbing. Yet I never felt poor, we always had plenty to eat and a warm home.
Some friends of our troops scoutmaster owned an old farm, no indoor plumbing, just a hand pump over a kitchen basin and potbelly stove in a center room on the 1st floor for heat. I had many good times there as a kid, sledding down the hills in the winter, roaming the woods, rabbit and pheasant hunting, gathering around the potbelly stove for warmth first thing on a cold winter's morning. It's shame that people are completely lost now when the power goes out. I still keep a camping stove, a percolator coffee pot, and plenty of gas and oil lanterns on hand for outages, I am content.
Cool sounds fun
My great great grandma had stream water in the cabin she grew up in in Oregon. It came in through the wall around waist level and went into a long wooden trough, miniature aqueduct sort of thing, then flowed out through the other wall. This was the 1890s I believe
A member of the church I attend, who was born in the 1920's in the hills of Virginia, told me her chore as a child was to carry water from the spring to the house several times a day. She said that when the family got a pump in the front yard it was like heaven.
YT4Me57 wow! My grandfather had the exact same chore and his family got a pump when he was 21! I'm not from the states though, I'm from the deep southern isles.
Standa Eik in certain ranch areas in Mexico you have a water tank on the roof I think 100 gallons or more they are fed by a main line but at a certain hour during the day but sometimes the main line would be down for a couple days or longer so they haul water from a well with barrels and pickups
In mexico it was a lil different matters on the area somtimes it was cut down a cactus or go dig a hole to get to a water source what my granma told me (never got a pump
HERPY DERPEDY oh wow didnt see your comment also nice
We are soooo spoiled now
I love this 'common people history'. Too often all we hear about history are kings and battles and monuments. It's gratifying to get a sense of how challenging family life was in those times.
I spent most of this video staring at that huge cabbage.
Me too I kept expecting him to work it into the show but no.
i thought it was bread dough at first
Time for some bubble and squeak! All we need are some potatoes and a nice big onion.
Oh. My. God. I would've sworn that was a loaf of bread. I still don't see any cabbage. Only bread. I feel so stupid.
Bjørn Vegar Torseth - Looks sorta like a huge brain.
My paternal grandparents didnt have electricity until 1960, indoor plumbing 1969. We had an old red hand pump in the kitchen. The original barn (1880s), was a chicken coop and feed storage, with a hog wallow built from split rails surrounding it. I have pictures of me and my older sister standing in the barn doorway. It's all gone now.
People say electricity or gas was the best indoor innovations......I say NO. Indoor plumbing was/is. Reason is........when it is very cold outside, I don't want to crap in a pot in my room ( little own what to wipe with or how to wash your hands) and then have to empty it in the morning. Even if it is warm out...who wants to go out to a little shack in the back yard to take a dump at 3 o'clock in the morning? No No No............I will take plumbing any day over the other "modern" things. Hot and cold running water......nice satisfying dump at 5 in the morning without having to put boots on warm running water to wash with cook with etc. I can light candles or lamps no problem but.........gotta have the throne :)
Flu viruses without modern plumbing? A scary idea!
Ya, imagine having a case of diarrhea, as we all have had at some point in out lives, with no plumbing. Please, please God, take back electricity and gas and give us plumbing lol.
not to mention having to tote water then heat it up manually for a Saturday bath if your lucky.
WW Suwannee, I agree, so we went with the Humanure indoor outhouse method:) Here's a link to the free pdf file so you may never have to go out at 3am ever again, enjoy! humanurehandbook.com/downloads/H2.pdf
my father grew up like that. he use to tease me when we went to my grandmother's that I had to watch out for the black widows that lingered under the seat. something about a part of my anatomy swelling up to the size and color of a ripe eggplant. I never once sat down
The other reason for turning things upside down is dust. I guarantee everyone had dust in those days, the houses were hardly as draft proof or dirt proof as they are today. Living out on the far SE plains of Colorado, we still always turn things upside down in cabinets because of dust.
"Sweet Lord of Mercy!", as my GranMa Edna used to say. For her, an inconvenience was something like a broken bone. Childbirth was a miracle. Books were treasures. Life was a gift. The sermon on the Mount of Olives was how she lived. She had many friends. b 1890
God bless her my grandfather was born in 1895 in Kentucky I spent every summer with him I truly miss him Jackie
“Where’s the sink? Where’s the water?”
I didn’t even realize that it was missing because I take mine for granted so much!
Oh... I remember visiting family on the farm in Kansas. Still using an outhouse. So proud to have indoor plumbing...but it was a hand pump on the sink in the kitchen, they still drained into a bucket and used that water for the garden outside. Everything stored underground or in the spring house. Put a meal together of everything they grew on the farm, including the bread from their wheat. Hard work....Everyone up before dawn and asleep by twenty minutes after sundown!
Dale Ann Harsh ...That's heaven right there!
you got that right!
Dale Ann Harsh good for you........
Dale, isn't that a beautiful, fulfilling lifestyle? You're asleep as soon as your noggin hits the pillow.
I love this channel! I learn so much from you that I use in my day to day life. I live in a 200+ year old house in Chile and I don't have indoor plumbing or electricity in the house. I heat the water that I bring in on my modern wood burning stove. I agree, keeping the stove/oven at a a constant temperature is an art, and I haven't mastered it yet!
I'm not complaining, I love my simple off-grid life.
Your up-beat voice and smile always brings a bit of happiness to my day. Thank you so much for your videos!
When we lived in the interior of Alaska we cooked by lamplite when to cold to use propane. I was fortunate to have a wood range and cook coffee there. Nothing like a heavy enameled pot with basket for coffee to perk. We hauled water, melted snow for cleaning, washing clothes & bathing. And I learned the term Over a Hot Stove when I boiled the whites so they'd be very clean.
My grandmother (born 1894) learned to cook in a fireplace. She described the cast iron pot hanging over the fire. Later, the family had a potbelly stove. I guess that was pure luxury. As a child, it was so difficult for me to envision a world without indoor running water, electricity (for lighting, fans and television, lol) and indoor toilets. Back in the 90's, an elderly cousin of mine (in Virginia) pointed with pride to the bathroom her father had built on the side porch. I remember how stunned I was when my parents sent me to a stay away camp that didn't have indoor toilets, only outhouses. I thought I'd been forced to live in the dark ages!
My father-in-law grew up in a house with a coal-fired stove and just a pump at the sink for water. They used an outhouse and heated up water in a giant tin bath in front of the stove in the kitchen for their weekly baths. This was in the 1940s-50s in Alabama. They never even ate loaf bread, just biscuits and corn bread.
I guess in the US fuel was more plentiful than in europe but I'm pretty sure that open fireplaces stopped beeing commen in the mid 19 hundreds and were replaced by fully enclosed fireplaces because they burned about half as much fuel.
Can you imagine how cities smelled in those days???
Europe as so crowded even by the 1600s that wood simply wasn't available to burn. In fact, coffins were simply forms with no top or bottom, and you were only buried long enough for the flesh to rot off the bones, and you were dug up, and your bone stored in a carnal house. Poor Yorick was dug up deliberately, and Juliette went to a carnal house to wait for Romeo. Anyway, enclosed stoves were more common on the continent, simply because America didn't need to conserve wood as much.
Charnel. A carnal house would be where the naked ladies dance ;)
Wonderful. I live in an 18th house. Have been without refrigator for 9 years and do not miss it. My kitchen range, wood fired is a huge improvement on the 18th. cent. In winter it cooks all my food.
Always wondered why soups/stews were a dietary staple of the 18th century. Makes sense now. Kinda hard to burn soup.
You can cover them too, so no smoke flavor, or way less.
I know this an old video but i will give my point here (long post):
Well....I'm the 90's generation. So, in regard of comment section, I can say i had the confort i needed when i was living with my mother. My father was living in a house his father build almost 100 years. Some parts of the house were probably built in the XVIIIe century cause of the wall thickness.
I can tell you that the house i was playing and working in whenever i came in (during summer hollydays) the house was old;
The walls were plastered, worn, there were cracks, holes in the ceilings. The kitchen tiles ground were from the early 20th century, white and red colours with cracks, dusts, holes.
There was this stove: 4 spots each consisting of 4 concentric rings. 1 small spot, 1 medium, 1 slightly larger and 1 very large. With the poker you had to remove the cover and one or more rings depending on the amount of wood you want to add.
There was this other place to open the hatch to evacuate the smoke I think.
There was the big black pipe connected to the chimney on the roof. This stove consisted of a bread oven and a tank to heat the water and evacuate via a tap.
I also remember this little door on the front of the stove to remove the drawer containing the ash. When I opened this little door, there was some sort of thick cast iron grate or whatever I could watch the crackling fire through, and the glowing ash falling in the ash pan. I was squatting and watching this burning spectacle for long minutes. This kind of stove dating from the late nineteenth century - early twentieth century was cast iron, steel, the facades were ceramic. For the materials I say that from memory ^^.
12m², it was not super large for a kitchen, it must be said there was always a mess on the table so to prepare the meal on it was impossible xD
There was a piece of furniture, a cupboard and a sink.
This sink was dirty, yellowed, the ceramic was damaged in some places. An old cupboard under the sink similar to the one in the video. Next to the sink, there was small storage and a drawer for some kitchen utensils, and next to the cupboard, the most important: the cache for the bottles of wine. On the wall on which the sink was supported, there were tiles, also cracked in some places strangely ^^.
Shelves and a fridge. The kitchen seemed more modern with its TV but for hot water you had to heat the water on the cook in a kettle. I also remembered having to take my bath in a large basin. Wash my hair in the garden and drain the water into the disgusting gutter where there was so much rubbish that it looked like the river Ganges.
In the kitchen the creamy burnt yellow walls were dull, with cracks, cobwebs, spiders and mice xD
Why I'm telling you this: Going from modernity (apartment when I lived with my mother) to my father's old house, which threatened to collapse with electrical outlets from the 1940s, was not always synonyme of comfort ^^.
There was also this barrel of water that was filtered to recover and use it to clean the dishes.
I was complaining about this when I was young but now, with the consumerist world, I regret this time. That same time when I was crushing the currant in a large bowl with my feet in the cellar to manufacture various alcohols ( Cider, rhubarb, redcurrant, brandy).
I'm not going to describe the entire property, but in many ways, the life my father and grandfather had was not that much different from the people of the 18th century.
In 1920, there was no freezer or fridge in France. I know that the Americans were ahead in their time unlike us.
However, we were food independent.
Since the house has been rebuilt, everything is modern, the barnyard is empty, the cellar with its press has disappeared.
When I see your videos, it makes me want to do gastronomic reenactment.
For me, the kitchen, the utensils, the materials of the tools that I use to cook, the fresh products, the colours and the flavours as well as the design of the kitchen are as important as preparing dinner.
I live in an apartment, very nice but the kitchen is as big as a cupboard for pygmies. xD
Sorry for the long post but that's a glimpse of life I had and i will probably never have.
Now i know why tropical places like Indian subcontinent and East Asian were big civilization cradles. Having weather on your side helps in so many ways. Food source throughout the year, outdoor kitchen, outdoor bathroom, usable water without having to heat it, not having to regulate temperature inside home, laundry by riverside ,washing dishes by riverside.
I smiled when you mentioned spring houses. We have spring houses scattered on old land here in the mountains of West Virginia. It was such a thrill going inside one for the first time! The water from the spring was still flowing, still cold, and old plates and circular-hewn rocks were in the trough, no longer needed to keep critters out of milk crocks! Love your videos and thank you for sharing!
One important thing you missed are the food preservation techniques used in addition to refrigerating. They used to preserve a great deal of seasonally available food items by drying, pickling, fermenting, jamming and salting. You needed to plan ahead for months what you were planning to eat, since there wouldn't have been much available in the winter. There would have been jars, barrels and canisters of all kinds of obscure stuff all around, especially in a German household.
The family farm in Ohio was established in the 1820’s as a kid I spent summers there and the ice box,wood cookstove with the hot water tank on the side and the hand water pump in the kitchen, There was also a large cistern in the side yard and the root cellar accessible from the basement. That brings back fond memories but the outhouse, not so fond!
I got a little taste of that about a year ago when I spent a summer in Alaska visiting my son and his family. They live in what there is called a dry cabin.They actually have a stove(propane) and electricity but no running water. Most of the people in the little settlement of Kenny Lake stil luse outhouses and a village well. Many or Most of the people go fill up a tank of water in the back of their pickup or on a traile maybe once a week or so. My son and his wife do most of their cooking outside on an open fire during the summer. Everybody gets a turn at lighting the fire each day and getting the big pot of wash water on every morning. I was really impressed at what delicious food was prepared on a daily basis.
I enjoy Dutch oven cooking and was able to participate in the outdoor cookery by cooking my signature chilli ( incidentaly it has no beans in it it uses Homminy) Thanks for your wonderful videos I watch these in preference to television programing.
Gary Morse
Cool! I grew up near there! We also had a dry place, for electricity Dad got a Subaru with a bad transmission and hooked up the engine to the house as a generator. We had to make water runs to the water point near the Kenny lake library.
Please send us a link to your chili recipe!
Is it possible to get your chili recipe using hominy?
@@donnaperyginathome yes
You have the best channel on TH-cam, and this is such a great video for understanding kitchens of the past. I was once in rural China a few years ago in a small mountain village where I stayed with a woman who had a kitchen like this. No running water, and using wood strips for fuel. The only modern thing there was a metal chimney. I could not believe the speed and skill that she had. She cranked out different dishes and breads so fast with it, and controlled the temperatures perfectly all along. I think skill is a major component of premodern kitchens. It's probably like speaking another language, no matter how much we learn, we still usually end up with an accent.
I WAS BORN IN 1947. WE HAD AN ICE BOX UNTIL I WAS 4 OR 5. I WAS 5 YRS. OLD WHEN WE GOT AN INDOOR BATHROOM. WE HAD OUT HOUSES UNTIL THEN. GLAD TO BE ALIVE IN THIS CENTURY..
That's the year I was born, also. We lived in the country 13 miles from town, 2.5 miles from neighbors, had a phone but no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. We had a wonderful spring for our water and used the creek for a fridge, by putting a metal box into the overflow from the spring. I learned to cook on a wood burning stove, and still have a small heating stove in my home that I can cook on if electric goes out because of storms, which has happened a few times. We got a gas range after a bit and used that in the summer, as canning on a wood stove was miserable. You had to carefully move the canner around a bit to keep the pressure regulated. We got electricity in the late 50's and had 1 light fixture and 1 outlet at first. Cash was in short supply and the house had not been wired when it was built. Running water and indoor plumbing came in the 60's. For a long time Mom had a gas engine on the wringer washer, and we had 6 very long clotheslines which we filled at least twice every washday. Water was hauled from the spring to a tub on top of an upturned oil drum which was made into a stove to heat the water, then it was bucketed into the washer. We raised a huge garden, there were 2 children in the family when my parents bought the place and the other six of us came along in the next 18 years. We raised chickens, got milk from the neighbors, and had lots of chores. It sounds like a hard way to live, but we never really felt that way, that's just how it was. One of my brothers and I were talking, long after we were all grown and away from there, and he laughed and said, "We were forced to eat gourmet food!" We ate lots of wild game, the men hunted in season and fished often. It was a wonderful way to grow up. Cash poor but love rich.Mom lived on the farm until 2001 and she was 88. She spent winters away from there, for about 8 years, mostly living with my husband and me, just 100 miles away. And heated with wood all the time she lived there.
My uncle's house on our family land had a box with a toilet seat on top floating over a hole around back. That was the only place to poop on our land until about 15 or 20 years ago. Gotta love the hillbilly side of my family
We are going backwards on this farm, lol. There's a wood stove to heat the house and cook on, there's a Humanure toilet and we hauled water up until 8 years ago. We now have hot & cold running water that I never take for granted and a garden that doesn't need watering even in drought conditions due to mulching. We could do without electricity, only if we have to. But we love our lifestyle even though it's inconvenient at times. Living with all the amenities is not something we would do again and I highly recommend this lifestyle to anyone who's thinking about it as it's very rewarding, go figure, lol.
I was born in 1959. I remember visiting relatives who still had an outhouse when I was 9. I remember my dad got up one night and watched me from the kitchen door as I went outside to use the outhouse so I wouldn't be scared.
Homestead Dreaming, that was awesome of your Dad to keep an eye on you, he took some of the scariness away and was there to save you:). Amazing how outhouses leave such long lasting memories!
I had thoughts of being attacked by animals or falling into the hole, lol. After decades I still don't like outhouses due to those walks in the dark & dark holes, so our in-house Humanure toilet is absolulte heaven:) Atb.
Love this channel. In Norway we have something called a "stabbur" it was one on every farm, to keep the food safe. Thick walls and and a turf roof, kept it cool in summer. The food had to tolerate low temperatures as well, as there is no fireplace in a stabbur. A fun fact, it only had one key, and the mistress of the farm had it in her belt. A stabbur is a small log structure, built on stilts or pillars of wood or stone, preventing mice and other rodents from finding their way in. For that reason there would be a gap between the outside stairs and the building itself.
Great video John. My country property is on 120 acres and a few things have broken recently. Our water pump (which pumps river water into a tank for the house) broke so we've resorted to bringing water in by buckets. And also we've run out of gas. So we heat our water over the wood fire for bathing and cooking. It definitely is an inconvenience at times but it's also quite a nice thing to really watch how much water we use on a daily basis. Sure makes me more careful with what I'm doing.
dashn64
Couple yrs ago our well pump went out. Hand pumped,that we made out of pvc, about 75-100gal a day 100 ft well for 8months. Laundry days more. This was mostly over Southern California summer, so had to be done before too hot or done at night.
WOW!
Was just thinking about turning off our hot water heater. every time some people wash dish's they run the hot water constantly. take's them 30 min or more to do them. drives me nut.
If you are using a river for water look up a rampump no electricity or and of that and supprizingly powerful wranglerstar has a great video on them
Thanks mate. Yeah I do know about ram pumps. We're trying to make the switch to rain water so a ram pump isn't required :)
My mother learned how to cook on a woodburning stove in Kentucky. This kind of kitchen is not that strange to a lot of people in the country.
Great video! Just in time for Thanksgiving. I certainly take things for granted until I don't have them. Living in Florida we recently had a BIG reminder of the ease in living with water, toilets, showers, sink, stove, refrigerator, and lights. We were cooking outside on a grill, jumping in the pool for getting clean and cool, candles for lights and NO social media! The kids were bored out of their minds until we played games huddled together with a big flashlight, talked, laughed, and when the electric finally came on days later, the kids asked when we could do it again. Friends and family were key in making it enjoyable. That and having pool water to use for flushing - vitally important! We are so blessed.
LOL The kids wanted to do it again ! LOL
I can imagine how terrifying it would be for someone from the 18th century to walk into a modern home. I'm trying to further myself in the culinary arts and I love to watch your content to understand the history of cooking, recipes, tools etc.
I always complain about the size of my kitchen but after seeing this I've come to appreciate what I do have.
Thanks for making these videos!
thanks for this tour, I have been engulfed in 18th and 19th Century cooking ever since reading "A Christmas Carol" and this video is Heaven. I'd really like to see a Christmas Dinner cooked as the Cratchits may have had theirs done. perhaps a little early in the era but if possible it would be great.
I did my economic history masters in log houses in Finland, and I love watching these videos and compare the differences in Northern American traditions to Northern European. Thank you for quality content! Greetings from Finland!
I love the video
I find very curious the idea of cooking on what is basically a ceramic table, I'm from Brazil and here what was traditionally used before gas became a thing was basically a trench made by two thick walls made of clay/mud on top of a table or base of the same construction, you would burn the wood between the walls and forming a roof usually was a cast iron plate with holes for the fire to hit the pans directly. As far as I know that kind of mud trench stove was used all the way from the XVI century to when gas became the norm, in rural areas that was only in the 1960's, and in the little ranch my mother have just out of town she still have one of those mud stoves (fogão de lenha we call it in portuguese).
i love this channel. so much integrity
I wonder if a couple of bricks, in the back of the oven, would help it maintain its temp. It's a trick used in modern ovens too. Put the bricks in there while it's heating up and leave them in there when you put the food inside.
There is another really good couple of reasons for turning your cups,bowls etc upside down. One is dust and the other is if you live in a cold climate and you have washed the bowls etc you can put them upside down and any residule moisture will make it's way out of the cup etc and when you pick it up it'll mostlikely be totally dry. This helps to stop bad stuff growing in it and it's better than having a wet mug etc.
residual
One of the things I love about going camping is experiencing these challenges. It makes me very grateful for the things most of us take for granted, especially indoor plumbing.
While I truly enjoy cooking over an open wood fire, and the great smell it leaves in my clothes, it would get tedious if I had to do it every day for every meal.
I've been living without running water for 8.5 years now, transferring from a rainwater cistern in 30 gal batches of 2.5 gal jugs to bring inside as needed, and yeah - it's everything John said. And more. What it's not at all is fun. And one of the major reasons I'm selling my place up in the hills and moving back to semi-civilization.
bobobobinalong uuuugggg... for the international audience, I think that's about 12 litres... so 15 trips for your 30 gallons.. Watch your back though. :-)
Well, you've proved you're a winterer, bobo, so you've earned the right to detest the life. I love everything but hauling water. And washing dishes by hand (no dishwasher). Where are you thinking of taking up residence now? I live in Spokane at the moment, but I dream of life outside of civilization-- if you want to call it that.
Been off grid for 10 yrs
We raised two children and thrive. Huge fresh garden zone 4b. An average 3 milk cows to haul water, feed & manure for. Beef cows, chickens & hogs.. and we choose to do it every day.
@@ka6148 nice i miss that life
@@slukky I've never used a dishwasher.
Most English houses had a larder for meat and game.. It was a room on the north side of the separate kitchen building, with a stone floor and thick brick walls. Ice gathered in the winter was used to help keep larders cool in summer. Smoking, salting and drying was used to preserve meats and fish. Dining was usually in the mid to late afternoon.
you should see a typical Philippine kitchen John. same as yours but a bit more rustic. i'll try and send some photos on my mext visit. In many countries they still cook this same way. And yes, the whole house fills with somke. But the food is amazing. Same as revitalizing tbe 18th century. Everything is cooked over a fire. Personally, I love it!
If our history lesson was like this back in school, I would have never cheated
This is likely a holdover from earlier times, but I learned to at least turn glasses over when putting them away from my grandfather (through my mom). The logic I was presented was that dust and other debris could settle in an upturned cup, which could contaminate a drink. Oddly enough, I was brought up to only apply this to cups, since I store everything else facing up, but it's fascinating to see the potential origins of this line of thought.
One enormous benefit of a waist-height hearth is safety. You're unlikely to catch the hem of your skirt in the fire if the fire is up high. And your little kids tend not to be able to fall into the flames. And maybe it's easier to ventilate, to remove the smoke.
I need to find me someone who loves me the way this man loves old kitchens.
Enjoyed how you incorporated old paintings to illustrate how kitchens were arranged in the past. Thanks for the history lesson. 🙂
I do enjoy the convenience of modern plumbing.
Haha same here
Same.
Ohhh yeah, with a fan too.
@@Wolfietherrat for your big smelly poop logs
@@VoxNerdula NO
Thank you for this episode. My grandmother, born in 1900 in rural south Alabama cooked on a wood stove, her mom on open hearth in her early cooking days. I grew up hearing her stories of the difficulties of cooking--rspecially of keeping wood chopped in appropriate sizes the fire going at the correct temoerature--and even of making the soap to clean and wash with. You help make us mindful of our blessings! Thanks again!
Great insight Jon! Modern life is definitely alot easier now a days! During Hunting season I still make breakfast by lantern outside over the fire! I love it!
Toms what sort of breakfast?
Depends Sometimes its a skillet breakfast with onions bell peppers potatoes sausage and egg and cheese mixed all together, or biscuits and gravy .coffee always! Some times bacon and hash browns and gravy.
Old fashioned campfire food! As for me, I'd probably be making eggs and veggies or maybe hash browns. I'll leave the sausage for others....just remembered FLAPJACKS
;)
TomsBackwoods ew....coffee
Easier, Tom, but less fulfilling. Ever wonder about that?
Great information. Reminded me of what we did when the power was out for two weeks. Especially heating water to wash the dishes.
I sorta wish we could go back in time, grab an 18th century chef, and put 'em in a modern kitchen, just to see the reaction.
:-D
+ daddydojang "18th century chef?"
Was the reference not clear?
max larsen funny. i love to cook a lot,but if i was brought back in time to the 18th century i think.I'll lose interest in cooking.. I'd probably just give up in life and die from starvation or.something
I think they would freak out about the electricity and technology before they ever freaked about the kitchen itself 😭
Alexia G could you imagine his reaction to those refrigerators with the touch screen's? LoL this is witchcraft!
I saw once, I don’t remember where, a picture of a cupboard with wire shelves and a wire bottom open to the cellar. The cold air came up thru to keep food cold.
Awesome video, loved it! I'm myself a historical reenactor (late-medieval period, central Europe) and I'm particularily fond of historical cooking. My house is a quite old building from the first half of 19th century and we decided to keep our kitchen as old-style as possible, perhaps not as old as the 1700's, but definitely Victorian ;) We have a large tiled stove for cooking, with a built-in cast iron oven. I also prefer hand-made pottery, baskets and stoneware for storing my food over modern plastic containers. Of course we do have a fridge, electric lights and most of the modern appliances, but I still prefer to use basic hand utensils. Is cooking in that way more time-consuming? Sure it is, but it also makes you appreciate the food that ends up on your table a lot more and plan your meals with greater care.
Cheers from a fellow reenactor! Keep up the good work :)
Gniewko Drewnicki I
Sorry, I believe your answer has been cut?
Gniewko Nice comment!
I'm jealous. We had an old home too, built in 1904, and our kitchen never worked for us. We since moved and our new kitchen is from the 1990's. I'd love to update it to make it old. Lol
I realized how much I took for granted growing up in America, when I moved to Thailand. People here do not have hot running water in their kitchens, and most don't have hot water in their showers, unless they purchase small heaters for their showers. Most Thai people still don't have toilets like we are used to in America, and still use squat toilets. And most people here hand wash their dishes (including me!) and many do it outside their homes on the ground. It was a huge eye opener when I came here in 2011, and I'm still amazed at how different things are still.
We were amazed to see how many live in Thailand. I photographed a couple kitchens our tour guide took us to. The cooking on the floor with the soot just going up the wall. One actually had a cement sink, again floor height. No table or chairs. The had a matt on the floor.
@@Downeastwaves yes! It really is a whole other world over here.
Well I feel like a spoiled brat after this. Absolutely love this channel, John. You and your team are just fantastic.
think about it.
few invention in the history of mankind have elevated living conditions, accelerated the progress of society and saved as many lives as indoor plumbing.
I heard a quote a while ago. "Plumbers have saved more people than doctors could ever hope to."
I'm a firm believer that indoor plumbing and refrigeration are two of humanities greatest inventions.
This is true. Unfortunately we know the dangers of early plumbing with lead in the roman empire led to them devolving into Italians and Greeks :(
Thanks so much for sharing!! I started out the video thinking, "OH! Their kitchen's not much different from ours!!" Little did I know. I could not imagine not washing my dishes, having everything taste like smoke or having to stoop down to cook on a low hearth. Not to mention the pest issues. . . . uggghhh. . . Our modern kitchens are pretty amazing by comparison. Thanks again for sharing!!
Cats and rat terriers
You can still wash your dishes. Why do you think they kept a big pot of hot water over the fire? Take some boiling hot water with a dipper, and put it in the wash basin. Add cold water to get the right temperature. Shave some soap into the water, and wash your dishes. Then throw the dirty water out the back door. Yes they worked hard in those days, to do things that come easy to us.
As for the mice that is why you see a cat in the old pictures.
Wow. I am going to appreciate my little kitchen today more than ever. I am humbled by these cooks of long ago. ❤️
My mother grew up in a farmhouse in Ireland in the 1940s. It had a hearth and no running water like in your video. I believe they finally got a range in the 1950s. They smoked their bacon (you would call it gammon) up the chimney.
So "backgammon" means "back bacon"? Stop the world...
You talk about having to fuss with the fire all the time to cook in the 18th century, two things.
1. I live on the road and cook either with my rocket stove or over an open fire. I don't fuss, I don't worry about temperature changes, why? Because I cook according to my kitchen, I flash fry or I slow cook, (yeah, I bake etc) but wasting time trying to adjust temperature is neither productive and is futile, I'm pretty sure that over a day to day existence, it was the same back then, there were more important jobs to be dealing with.
2.On occasion, I will go the route of some fancy cooking, that is when the rocket stove takes over, I have a modicum of control over heat, but these times are the days which I set aside for my cooking.
I have also cooked over brick built wood fired stoves, temp control is down to pot/pan placement, the stove doubled as a heathing source with the chimney running out through adjoining rooms before exiting the house, even then it could be adjusted for the hotter summer months.
I had a constant supply of hot water, through a large pot, sat at the back of the stove, no point in wasting heat.
So, although I don't doubt things were different in the US inb the 18th century, I'm opretty sure that they wouyld have gone for the simpler route of cooking to the fire, not adjusting the fire to cooking.
All the same, interesting video, I'm just rebuilding my camp and waggon, so it is a great source of ideas and tips!
My mom grew up in Puerto Rico she's now in her 80s but I still to this day store all my dishes upside down even though technically there is no need to but that's how she taught us.
Aside from the errant bug, it's actually good for keeping dust out of dishes you don't use much. I don't turn something like a stack of cereal bowls upside-down, but mugs and glasses I don't use much are definitely kept upside-down.
My Grandmother did that also. smart woman your Mother. it dose keep dust out
MV, keeps the dust out of them too.
Marisol Velasco I still store mine upside down too! It's what mom said had to be done!
My partner still tries to do that today because he swears lizards will run over the dishes in the cabinets.
This was interesting! My grandmother lived in what used to be an old school building, and the kitchen there did have some modern conveniences installed later, but my grandmother also had the old cooking surfaces and the large bread oven - all wood fire fuelled. A step up from the kitchen being shown here (the fire was put inside a fireplace below the stovetop), but still quite old and interesting. She still actively used all those, for cooking.
She also did have a fridge, but also used the old pantry, which was a separate room next to the kitchen that was well insulated and actually was always a bit cooler than the rest of the house. She also had a cellar that stayed pretty cool, where she also stored food stuffs and drinks that didn't need to be kept very cold. (and a modern convenience - a freezer box, too).
She did a lot of cooking, and had a vegetable garden, and a hot house, and bushes with different berries - she got pretty much everything but meat from her garden and fields.
We are so spoiled by modern plumbing and electricity. Light and heat whenever we like, hot or cold running water on demand.
I am old enough to remember visiting my mother's friend's parents in Cape Breton. They had a lovely white enameled wood burning stove in the front sitting room, which had originally been the kitchen. When electricity became available in the area, the family had a small galley modern kitchen built off of the original kitchen. A plumbed in sink, an electric stove, a fridge, lighting. And with the electricity came a link up to a modern sewage system!!! An indoor bathroom with toilet and bathtub!!
But I remember being a youngster, sitting with my "surrogate" grandparents in that former kitchen, with that wood stove creating a lovely warmth in the house. At that point, the wood stove wasn't used for cooking any more, but it was used to keep food warm.
The father of the house chopped wood for that stove everyday of his life. At 83, he was out chopping kindling, he was struck down with an aneurysm that could have taken him down at any time in his life.
I have lovely memories of that room.
I'm very sorry for your loss, but thank you for that beautiful story. I've had similar experiences and I felt like I was there in that home. It was really peaceful
How precious.
I remember in the early 1960's my grand mother had a wood stove converted to gas in Newark. I think in the late 18th century city people were starting to use those cast iron wood stoves with built in ovens thanks to people like Ben Franklin.
+ Robert Schuster -- The Franklin Stove was a space heater, not a cookstove. The internal baffle design heated the air and directed it into the room, while also creating less smoke than a standard fireplace. It was a different Benjamin -- Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford -- who is credited with designing the earliest purpose-built cookstoves, although his were masonry, not metal. Cast iron stoves became more common in the 1820s, and it was in the late 19th century that the "modern" freestanding metal woodstove made its appearance in the kitchen; that kind can still be purchased today.
Franklin was one of many stove designers and the wood burning stove goes back to the 16th century in Germany. Today most people use a "Franklin" stove for heating but they are quite capable for cooking on the top but mostly when you say cast iron stoves people think of Franklin stoves. My grandmother had a wood burning stove/oven from the 1800's that could burn wood or coal before being converted to gas. The fire box was on the left side with the oven to the right.
I like the section on indoor plumbing. An amazing blessing. When we go camping I haul water in buckets from a spigot about 50 yards away, and use that water for cooking and dishes. Much easier at home with my sink.
Some friends of mine live off-grid your kitchen is quite similar to theirs great Chan on my friend thank you for your knowledge and expertise
we are not totally off grid but, power is limitted...we are in a converted former country general store and post office that we renovated into a cabin home; the original section from 1930(that's old for in the north where we are) was log construction(later sided over with shiplap)...anyhow we are not plumbed but, have plumbing in another building next door...so I haul water for dishes and empty it when done...we heat with an antique wood cookstove in winter...and though I do have some countertop kitchen appliances(hot plate, slow cooker for example) we are cooking and baking on/in the wood cookstove. It's not so bad really and I have gone without electricity or plumbing in past on a remote homestead and this is much easier of course but...yeah cooking is more time consuming because you have to get the oven temperature where you want it...and keep it steady etc...but it bakes really nice.
Not sure how I came across this channel but my gosh, I'm so glad I did. What you all do and the lengths you take to stay authentic at Townsends is amazing. This is what TH-cam is for me and why I left traditional television. Such unique content available.
This is a incredible episode... Thanks
This is awesome! This is so interesting and I learn so much! Thank you! From Inuvik, NWT, Canada.
I still turn my stuff upside down, but not cause of rodents, but 1 so dishes with a little water after the wash can drain out (have that rubber mat mesh stuff then under it shelf liner) and 2 dust ... we dont use a lot of dishes constantly so things can sit in a cabinet for periods of time
osgeld I think Jon meant when storing the bowls away in cupboards or shelving.
I learn so much with every video.
I attended an 18th-century cooking seminar at Fort Klock in upstate New York about 10 years or so ago. We made Lumpen und Fleeh (pork and cabbage with cumin seeds), Palatine Egg Puff, Pumpkin and Apples, Sausages (which we stuffed ourselves), Carett Pudding, Pot Supper, and several other dishes, all cooked on a floor-level hearth. We also baked bread in an outdoor oven, using cabbage leaves to protect the bottom of the loaves from ashes. It was a lot of fun, and we ate all day!!
Your dedication to history and teaching are so inspiring. When i was homeschooling my son I would watch your show with him. It inspired him to learn about American history and entertained him. I wish that watching your videos were part of the public school system.
that is a beautiful giant cabbage. we have four of those in our garden right now just begging to get used.
YUM! :-P'
Sounds like it's time for a big bowl of colcannon!
Sauerkraut. :)
I keep suggesting good ol' Bubble 'n' Squeak
i saw that and was like, 'is that cabbage?!! it's ginormous!'
The temperature drop may be beneficial for baking. Most of the heat is needed at the beginning for rise. And you don't want the crust to form to fast. So, dropping may help it cook in some ways easier than a consistant oven.
I could be having the worst day, as soon as he starts talking everything seems OK.
He is a most pleasant fellow. I can't imagine him shouting "I can't work like this! I'll be in my trailer."
He does have a soothing voice, doesn't he.
A lot of people say that. It seems for some mental disturbances these videos are better than psychoanalysis.
Me too! I want to know they are thriving in the " video area" way.
Same thing happens to me. These type of videos make me feel calm and at peace.
I love the layouts of your kitchens.
It makes me fantasize for designs for homes, and it makes me appreciate what we have today
We are wonderfully blessed. I live like a king in comparison.
Agree! I think this often. Especially when we have rare fruits or out of season veggies - common now, the food of kings then!
Late to the party here (but loving every minute)... This is my new fave Townsends video. So many people have so little appreciation for the wonderful amenities we have in the modern world. I often think about how difficult life was in the past - this really showcased it quite well. Thank you!!
This was a very, very good video. You struck a chord with me when you got to the part about water. We take it for granted, but my (grown) son recently went to Haiti as a volunteer to help drill a clean water well with a group called Living Water. He described the conditions he encountered there, generally no electricity, no municipal water, etc, and right here in our own hemisphere we have folks living in what approximates the 18th century.
When there is a thunderstorm that knocks out our electricity for 30-45 minutes, it makes you realize that it is indeed a 21st century first world problem.
Thanks as always for the content, and I can only give one thumbs up (but I wish I could multiply it by a thousand.)
Ken Davis I mean, if someone is on life support and the power goes off for 30-45 minutes its not really a first world problem.......
@@katiebayliss9887 Hospitals and nursing homes have back-up generators. People who use electrically powered oxygen pumps and the like at home know to go to a hospital.
Another great video. And the comment section is just as good. People sharing their life experiences and their family history peace and blessings to all who pass by here
Back then, IF people bathed, they set up a "bathtub" in the kitchen. Don't forget, the privy was truly, and "out house." ¶Some who were more wealthy also had an ice house, lined with wood and stuffed with saw-dust as insulation. The ice was cut from lakes, rivers and ponds in the winter, and placed in the ice house for cold storage.
My dad's side used to cut the ice from a widened pond next to the house. I saw the old ice shed before it rotted away. Now it's just bramble weeds & berries.
We turn some of our dishes upside down; jars, mugs, and glasses primarily. We do it to keep dust out of the things, especially for storing canning jars.
I've got to say, I'm NOT jealous of my ancestors.
Well, families were probably more connected back then, I guess there's pros and cons in any time era 😊
You say that....but, phones.
What I mean is families spent more personal face to face time socializing with each other and there weren't as many technological distractions
@Klausbärbel Fömm I agree with you that those are all great modern things that we can enjoy today, like I said there's pros and cons in any generation 😊
I absolutely love to learn all of these details. I've wondered endlessly about this information since childhood, so thank you so much!
Also, you seem to be the nicest person...and it's comforting just listen to you and the way you communicate. Just lovely.
Dude, I love your channel. Every single video is incredibly interesting and you're an engaging host! I love your enthusiasm! -Big Fan from Canada
I love the fussing. Must mix green w/ dry wood for control. It's an art. I've lived this way & loved it. The only thing I'd want is a hand pump in the kitchen. Hauling water sux! I wish we still lived like this.
I love this. I guess if we ask our parents or grandparents we get similar stories ( I know not exact). I know my mom talked of her grandma firing up the potbelly stove every single morning. She told me they had a cellar. As she got older they eventually got a ice chest. They made soap from the pig fat to wash dishes. Amazing all of it is to me. This is great! What appliance in the kitchen do you think you could not live without?
Fridge or stove...either one. Well, BOTH, really.
Having a fridge/freezer is an amazing luxury. It allows for once-a-week, rather than daily shopping. Without a modern kitchen, my husband and I could not both work. I would literally be gathering and preparing food all. Day. Long.
I use my oven almost daily!
I so agree! The refrigerator allows us to store food. Although I have heard people say cellers work great. The freezer is just plain wonderful! I commute so going to the store daily is almost impossible.
For me, it's the pump in the kitchen. I can do all else no problemo, but hauling water is the worst. As for plumbing, yeah, that's nice too. I'd've used some kind of tubing/piping to run the water out of the kitchen. Showers outside, even in winter. Did that up here in WA state! Invigorating. Like a sauna & cool-off pool all in one!
Wonderful and absolutely fascinating! 1776 just 242 years ago, in the time frame of 1000 years, really NOT that long ago when you LOOK at those numbers! I grew up spending summers in my late grandmothers house built in 1776 on old Cape Cod. It too used to have two fireplaces and a root cellar under the floor boards. My late grandfather renovated the house in the 1930s but even in the 50s and 60s it didn't have any baseboard heating until in the 70s. It had no door knobs and all the doors had black wrought iron latches. Love any old historic houses and have been in many including Orchard House where Little Women was written in Concord MA. I remember seeing 18th century kitchens in Sturbridge MA and also historic Williamsburg VA another thrilling place to visit and travel back to early American history! Thanks for sharing~