Those that live here never need want wood, for here is great store.
Emmanuel Altham, Three Visitors to Early Plymouth
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
Spongebob, opening theme song
Firewood
It’s the heating oil, natural gas, propane, solar and electric of 17th-century New England.
Mourt’s Relation (http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/mourt2.html) which chronicles the very beginning of the Plimoth settlement, has over 50 references to wood in its first few dozen pages, many of those specifically about getting firewood:
- The same day, so soon as we could we set ashore 15 or 16 men, well armed, with some to fetch wood for we had none left…
- …there we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and refreshed our people…
- …some kindled a fire, and others fetched wood, and there held our rendezvous that night.
- Our people did make things as fitting as they could, and time would, in seeking out wood…
- When we came to shore, we made us a barricade, and got firewood…
- So being both weary and faint, for we had eaten nothing all that day, we fell to making our rendezvous and get firewood, which always costs us a great deal of labor…
- Our greatest labor will be fetching of our wood, which is half a quarter of an English mile…
The elemental importance of firewood is clear, as is the labor required to procure it. This is no small thing.
Colonial House guys taking the thwart saw for a spin.
When the intrepid folks from the PBS series Colonial House ( http://www.pbs.org/wnet/colonialhouse/ ) were sent on their merry way to the wilds of downeast Maine several years ago–to live in the manner of a 17th-century new world colony–one of the first questions they asked their producers was: Should we be spending this ridiculous amount of time gathering firewood? That question was a revelation for us (and The Colonial House participants!) and really brought home the absolute need and amount of labor required to get firewood in any century!
Chopping and splitting in the time before perspective had been invented. Look out for my calf!
In our recreated village, the processing, use, and storage of firewood is vital in presenting an accurate portrayal of Plimoth Colony. Crunching some numbers, with the help of some standards drawn from Rob Tarule’s book, The Artisan of Ipswich (http://www.plimoth.com/books-media/artisan-of-ipswich.html) The Riven Word has come up with some interesting extrapolations: If Plimoth Colony has 30 households in the year 1627, and each household uses a minimum of 15 cords of firewood annually, that translates to 450 cords of wood/year. At a standard cordwood measure of 4′ high and 4′ deep, that is a line of firewood 3600′ long, or roughly 2/3rds of a mile. Every year. That’s a LOT of work just getting fuel. Playing with numbers is fun for the whole family!
Storage
We go through about 10-15 cords/year in our recreated site. Not so long ago, firewood was delivered to the pilgrim village via a dumptruck in the hours before opening. With a full load, the old Dodge would labor up the hill in reverse, leaving a third of its load at the top, a third in the middle, and a third at the bottom of the hill. Pilgrims would rally to action, lugging the various pieces back to haphazard piles in and around the their houses. Sometimes, heaps of wood would end up in a pile along the street adjacent to the house. Such a delivery method was convenient, to be sure, but in the end it looked, well…delivered.
We wondered if there was something that was at once convenient, practical, AND a better historically accurate display of firewood. Thinking outside of the wood pile, as it were, our renaissance-blacksmith Mark Atchison came up with an alternative to truck deliveries. What if we kept firewood in a few large piles in the village, and what if this pile was something a little more organized than a mere heap? Are there English examples of such wood piles?
A “woodrick” was born.
Woodricks
We cut our wood to an even length and stack it in a circular ring. The biggest diameter woodrick we’ve made was about 14′, but we’ve found a 12′ stack is a bit more manageable. As we pile the wood ring upon ring, we’re careful to stack it level, or even slanted inward towards the center for stability’s sake–not unlike a dry-laid stone wall. When the rings are a couple feet high, we start to throw the knotty and gnarled pieces in the center. (Unlike cheap chocolate Easter bunnies, our woodricks are NOT hollow!) We’re careful to keep the sides even as we work our way up. The rick starts to taper towards its rounded top at about 7′. Making rings, pitching pieces in the center, rinse and repeat: It’s very therapeutic. The last pieces are laid carefully on top to form a “roof”. The pile “breathes”, as it were, and with all that exposed end grain and very few pieces in contact with the earth, it’s a great way to season your haul.
Mark found some English examples of woodricks from just a bit after our period:
If the drawing is to scale, that's a pretty good pile of wood! Good for you, Phi Sigma Kappa!
What I like about the above woodcut is the use of a woodrick in what would appear to be a limited space. If the firewood was stacked laterally in typical cordwood fashion, it would take up a greater amount of the yard–maybe even cutting into bowling on the green! Those clever Oxfordians!
Mark’s research brought him to far flung places:
…such as a convent in eastern Estonia, where the rick’s pointed tops echo Eastern orthodox architecture. Very, very cool.
http://tartumaaponderings.wordpress.com/page/5/
So, take not for granted the labor to have and to keep the humble stack of firewood. Like getting water from a spring, it’s an indispensable, if overlooked, necessity.
Chris was whistling a Jimmy Page guitar solo when this pic was taken...
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Wish I had a photo of this instead of a copy. Best. Picture. Ever.
Tags: firewood, pilgrim, Plimoth Plantation, round wood pile, wood rick
Great post and a great way to store fire wood. Much better than mine – in a messy heap on the field until I get round to moving it. Love this blog wish I could visit but it’s the wrong side of the pond!
I hear you, Kev. Messy heaps tend to stalk us all, don’t they? We’ve made proportionately smaller woodricks on occasion, on Plimoth’s Education Site, which used only a little more than a cord of wood, if that would help to get you started! When I see those Sisters and their significant ricks, it’s more than a little daunting!
Gransfor Bruks shows the method in the axe book they distribute with their axes. And my neighbour in Maine recommended it.
Thanks for the heads up, rfrancis. We’ll check them out. Do you have any pics of your neighbor’s woodrick? Send them along to our email if you’d like to: artisans@plimoth.org What kind of Gransfor Bruks ax are you using?
Rick
great stuff here. Thanks for the lowdown on those woodpiles. They always leave people wondering. I don’t burn wood here at home, but have in the past…and just came last week from a visit to Bill Coperthwaite, who has sawn all his fuel since before 1960 with a handsaw…Bill told us that a woolen hat (worn indoors during a Maine winter) is worth 1/2 a cord of wood.
I know we have kicked around the ideas that maybe the early Anglos here in New England were burning the tops of trees for fuel – harder to manage all that little junk, but easier to cut, chop, split, etc. And you end up with lots of it when felling trees for clearing land, hewing houses, making joined chests, shipping pipestaves, etc…
The Estonian images are un-real. Any mention of Estonia (they aren’t frequent in Massachusetts) brings to mind a great book that was instrumental to the men who taught me green woodworking 32 years ago – “Woodworking in Estonia” – a friend of mine found a link to this incredibly hard-to-find book, where you can download it for a fee.
["Woodworking in Estonia" was for A. Viires PhD if you go to http://www.ntis.gov/search/index.aspx go to Advance Search and using the Accession No. TT-68-50342 it is an Electronic Document costing $35.00 US or you can purchase a CD or soft cover both for more $.]
The pictures are not the best in the printed version, but I’ve heard the electronic version they are even worse. But the book is a gas. I’m not sure when the field work for this book was done, after WWII at least. Published in 1969. Here’s what Roy Underhill said about it:
“Woodworking in Estonia” by A. Viires (National Technical Information Service). This is our share of the booty from the cultural exchanges of the Cold War years. The Soviets got models of our nuclear subs, and we got one of the best books on folk woodworking ever. Aside from showing how to make everything from wooden wheels to bentwood cheese boxes, this book is also an education in the way Eastern European history gets written. Imagine Eric Sloane dividing early American woodworking into feudal, capitalist and socialist periods!
pretty long for a comment. thanks again for your work on this blog…
I really want to see you make a bentwood cheese box. By the way, could there be a better name for a bluegrass outfit than, “Bentwood Cheesebox”?
Thanks for bringing up the form of wood also, Peter. All of the pictures show what appears to be standard split firewood (do you think the Estonian Nuns had a 4-way hydraulic splitter?) Mark has always thought that we should represent more of the “lop and top” of the trees we use for hewing and other various building. It would be a good study to calculate how much wood comes from the top of an oak we use for a post or beam–I bet we could come up with a standard.
You referenced Coperthwaite and Underhill in the same reply–National treasures both. Thanks–
This is a dumb question – how do you get it out of there to use? Do you put a ladder up like the nuns? If so, do you have to keep re-laying the “roof” as the pile gets lower?
Not a dumb question at all, Elizabeth! I’m sorry I neglected to speak of how the wood is retrieved from the pile–we get asked that a lot. I’m going to guess that somewhere in the world, along the space time continuum, several folks got together and played a version of Jenga, taking pieces out one at a time from the rick’s bottom and making bets on who’d be the lucky one…
Alas, we’re more prosaic in our wood retrieval: We use a ladder like the nuns and toss pieces down to the ground from the top of the pile. Occasionally, the more nimble among us will climb the pile sans ladder. When the wood is seasoned (after a year or so) there’s really no need to continue to roof it–if it’s rained on, it’s just a surface wet. Plus, it usually goes pretty fast once we break into it. Thanks for asking, Elizabeth–are you thinking of making your own woodrick?
No, I have a woodpile that is probably worth about 3 shillings. I was just thinking from the cooking stuff perspective – how would I have gotten wood from there in a pinch in my three petticoats (sitcom coming soon.) thanks for the lowdown on the wood, Rick.
I’ve been stacking my wood on end in conical piles for several years, based on probably faulty memory of a picture of a wood pile in Sweden. Bet it was really done like you show. I started doing that because it is harder for marauding children to knock over, but found that it is a nice way to season wood, with only a little bit of the ends of some in contact with the ground. I think maybe I’ll follow your example when I drag it up to the house this fall. Is it possible that with the trees the first settlers encountered, even the branches needed splitting? I’m thinking of our old growth trees here and my replica English ax and feeling very insignificant. Thanks for the historical referance ( I was sure you had one ).
John, aren’t you a blacksmith? Subconsciously, you were stacking your firewood on end in order to make charcoal for your forge! That’s how it’s done–Mark A. makes charcoal every September as part of our exhibit. He mostly uses small diameter stuff–1 1/2 to 3″–which coals more evenly.Come out for a visit this year and check it out. We’ll blog about it as we get closer to coaling time.
Good call on splitting branch stock. Most oak limbs are certainly big enough, even in non old-growth trees. And as you know, firewood will season quicker and better once all that grain is exposed.
Thanks for weighing in, John.
Hello,
If your pile is 12′ high when it’s completed, how high is it , say one year later when you begin to pluck pieces for use in the fire?
Greetings,
Don Wagstaff
Hi Don,
The woodricks we’ve made have varied between 12 and 15′ in diameter and 12-16′ high. We tend to go through a single rick each season, burning firewood March through November– our public sites are closed in the winter. So for us, one rick lasts 9 months. We augment rickwood with various other firewood gleanings around the site, from deconstruction, etc…
Ideally, we’d have one rick from which to draw from and one rick being built or seasoned for the next year. It’s always a matter of staying ahead of demand!
The biggest woodrick we made a few years ago was striking to look at, but it became unstable after a couple months due to improper stacking on one side, and shifting, soft ground below. It was slowly listing to that one side. We ended up pushing most of it down with the bucket of a tractor in an effort to stabilize it. It was a lesson learned. The larger the pile, the more particular one must be in its stacking.
Hope that answered your question, Don. Good to hear from you–
Rick
I completely misunderstood your question, Don–sorry bout that. You’re asking if the pile settles some from seasoning or the ground below being compacted? That, sir, is an excellent question and one which begs research. Visually, it doesn’t appear to move much at all over the course of a year. Though I would be surprised if it didn’t settle a couple of inches.
I’m very glad you asked, Don. We really do need to get a measure of the height (and girth) of a brand new pile, and compare those measurements to the same pile seasoned. Can you remind me in December?
There is no evidence in england early 17c of wood ricks. wood needs to be allowed to dry, the winter climate is wet. Hovels were used, we have sucessfully used the system at Greyhill. See Rob Stuart’s [Stuart Peachey ] book on Hovels- Stuart Press
Then what changed between the early 17th century and the Oxford illustration Rick posted in this blog? Clearly that’s a woodpile that’s two stories high…
And what kind of woodpile did the Suffolk fellow presumably hideaway in, referenced in the Winthrop Papers, early 1630s = see the next post on this blog. Even though the story about hiding from his shrewish wife is a joke, the idea that he had a woodpile large enough to hide in and live in would need to be acceptable to an English audience for the tall tale…
I have a photo of a hovel in use at Greyhill, I cannot work out how to post it here so I will post it on the Greyhill facebook page.
Hi Gilly. Are you the Gilly who came to Plimoth Plantation with Stuart last year? Thanks for your comment! When Stuart visited us last year, we were VERY impressed by both his enthusiasm and the breadth of his knowledge. Our various conversations with him ran the gambit (daubed floor recipes, chimney hearth proportions, etc…) but alas, didn’t include discussion of woodricks. I wish we’d had more time with him. Thanks so much for bringing up The Hovel 1580-1660, by Rob Stuart, Stuart Press, 2002. Frankly, I’ve always been a little baffled by “hovels”, there are so many regional variations and potential uses. We’ve only scratched the surface and we need to look deeper into their varied use. That book is an excellent source and thanks for reminding us of it.
When we make a decision to build something, especially when we don’t have a clear primary source reference to guide us, we’re making a public statement which holds itself open to discussion and debate. That’s the fun part. The only drawback to this is if we don’t present alternatives, it may come across as though we’re saying that this is the only way it’s done. Far from it! Our woodrick is only one of numerous historically plausible ways of seasoning and storing wood which satisfies needs both historic and practical for our museum. (Wow–THAT was a sentence!) We will continue to explore alternatives as we go along and we very much appreciate your input.
Gilly, can you send along the Facebook address for Greyhill? I wasn’t able to find it. If it’s ok with you, I’d like to continue this conversation. Thanks again for your input. Kim says hi from Plymouth, MA!
Rick
Hello,
In fact my poor effort at communicating led you to conclude something other than was my intention. Maybe an illustration would be better. You know I have a small shed, well a few small sheds, for storing and seasoning about 20 cubic meters of wood I use per year for heating the house. If I fill such a shed to the top beam so that the wood is jammed right up against there, wedged in even, after some months, 3 or 6, the wood has lost volume as it has dried out and no doubt some settling of the stack has occurred, and there will be a sizable gap now between that last layer of wood and the beam it was once jammed against. Your numbers trick just got me to wondering what the accumulative loss in height would be of all those billets diminishing in volume as the moisture evaporates.
Greetings,
Don Wagstaff
p.s. Thanks for the reminders you send of your updates.
Don, do you have numbers on how much the wood has diminished upon seasoning in your own shed? I’m serious about taking measurements of the next woodrick we build. I think that is an excellent suggestion. The only tricky factor is the possible settling of the ground beneath the pile, but I still think it’s worth a measurement.
I have just dusted off my copy of R.Bruce Hoadley’s amazing book, Understanding Wood A Craftsman’s Guide to Wood Technology, 1980, Taunton Press. Here are some fun stats drawn from the book:
A standard cord (as opposed to the smaller face cord) occupies 128 cubic feet of space, though the average cord contains only about 80 cubic feet of solid wood. Eastern White Pine has the heating value of 100 gallons of No.2 fuel oil, while hickory has a fuel value of 200 gallons (based on stove efficiency and moisture content of wood).
Bruce backs up phrases like, “coefficient of thermal linear expansion” with perfectly rendered illustrations and tables which help knuckleheads like me to understand.
Other topics covered include comparative resistance of heartwood to decay, wood shrinkage, and various strength properties. I think the general principles would cross the pond seamlessly.
The book is still in print and is well worth a modest investment. Thanks for prompting me to re-discover it!
Rick
You mention: “At a standard cordwood measure of 4′ high and 4′ deep…”
Isn’t a cord “…a well stacked woodpile 4 feet (122 cm) wide, 4 feet (122 cm) high, and 8 feet (244 cm) long; or any other arrangement of linear measurements that yields the same volume.” ?
Does this change your thoughts at all? Just wondering. You may have had that in mind the whole time as the “third dimension” is not mentioned in your post.
Hi Erik,
I can understand the confusion. I could have been clearer.
I extrapolated numbers from a rough estimate of firewood use around the year 1627 in Plimoth Colony. The estimate I’ve made is that Plimoth is using around 450 cords/year at that time.
So, 450 cords X 8′/cord (standard cord length) = 3600 linear feet of a stack 4′high by 4′deep, or roughly 2/3rds of a mile.
Does that sound right? I’m given to questioning my math skills, but I think I’ve got this one.
I think that missing “3rd dimension” is why I can’t balance my checkbook!
Thanks Erik–
So how much wood can you fit into a 12′ diameter woodrick? I would guess about 8-10cords.
Your guess is a really good one, Mathew. That’s about what we think as well. We need to hire some interns who will take apart the rick in one night, measure it, and put it back together before our museum guests arrive…