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History > Where History Happened > Outbuildings

OUTBUILDINGS: Each Farm Has its Outbuildings
Like mother hens brooding their chicks, farmsteads embraced a cluster of outbuildings--ice house, spring house, root cellar, wood shed, corn crib, meat house, smokehouse, hen house, outhouse. Ice houses, dug into the ground for insulation, kept their contents frozen often till late summer ("The ice always gave out on the hottest day," recalls Deborah Iddings Willson.) Spring houses kept milk and butter cool and were often known as dairies. In meat houses, treated hams, shoulders, jowls, and bacon hung to cure out of reach of animals. Corn cribs were carefully partitioned to allow air to circulate through the bottom of the crib, where loose kernels concentrated and could rot. The blessings of electricity and indoor facilities ended the need for many outbuildings.
	A rare "soddy" stood at Longwood a century ago. Sod structures were common on the Great Plains in the 1800s. This photo comes from an album of Longwood pictures taken by a sensitive but unknown photographer in the late 1890s.
The presence of a roof resting on the ground usually meant that an underground ice house existed beneath. Most farms dug ice ponds, usually along stream valleys. S. Brook Moore recalls harvesting ice at Plainfield: cutting it with a large-toothed saw, rafting slabs ashore with a harpoonlike pole--and trying to avoid falling into the frigid water. Each summer at Rose Hill the Canby family drained the ice pond to harvest bushels of eels.	This unusual structure, set behind Oak Hill in Spencerville, is believed to be the entrance to a root cellar. Placed underground to control temperature and circulation, root cellars stored potatoes and root crops such as turnips, parsnips, and rutabagas.