Tuesday, November 12, 2002

A hole in the ground is never just a hole in the ground!

  I remember hearing, one day, a statement by the actor Vincent Price when eluding to the fact that his wife had just built a brick wall for their garden.  He said, “ my wife says if you can frost a layer cake, you can build a brick wall.”

 Back in 1973 we decided to build a home on the top of a mountain in Northern NY.  It had been finished for about a year after tremendous help from our friends and 5 kids and their friends, when we decided we needed a wood shed put on the back of the garage with an entrance from the garage to the wood shed.

 At that time, we were burning about 40 cords of wood in a 9-month season (in St. Lawrence county, one has 10 months of snow sledding and 2 months of rough sledding!), even though this 4800 sq. ft., 2 story building, was a totally electric house.  Don’t even say anything about the size of this place. It cost us $7,800. to build it!!! Stuff was cheap in those days. Besides we were 7 people and we had our places of business in this building. 

 Now, a homesteader with total electric!!!! I can hear your brains clicking from here.  We have been mother earth people since 1965.. But we were not stupid!  The power was quite a way from our parcel of 22 acres and the power company sent their suits up to assess the building site and to commence to tell us it would cost $8,500. cash to bring the power to the site. That might as well have been $85,000.dollars. We used to make major decisions here. Do we take the kids to the movies or buy some 2x4’s! 

  I asked them what it would cost if we were planning on building a total electric home.  (They were really pushing this type of commitment in those days.)  “Why, if that is your plan”, says one of the suits, “then the cost of bringing the electric in for the ¾ mile would be nothing!”   “Of course that is our plan, “ says I, “ how did you misunderstand this in the beginning?”

 Needless to say, we put in the electric heat runs.  It was cheap! Carl at that time was a certified electrician who had left the power company on Long Island to open his own appliance repair service in Potsdam, NY. We had built in labor!!!  Carl and our 3 sons ages 12 to 16.  Also, after the electric was hooked up to our home, we installed 3 Jutul wood burning stoves and lived happily ever after, probably never putting the electric heat on except for a week or two each winter when we took the kids south on Christmas vacations. 

 This brings us back to the initial part of my story. 40 cords of wood!  We have a friend, who at that time had the same amount of kids as us, almost the same ages. This friend, back then, was the local conservation officer. He used to buy cordwood on the stump for 50 cents a cord and we would all go out on weekends in the fall and cut the designated trees and haul them back to our respective homes.  Besides the gas for the chain saws and our labor it cost each family 25 cents a cord, plus the camaraderie of this calorie burning adventure.  One year, inflation hit this deal and the state of NY raised it to $1.00 per cord on the stump.  Also, this was not face cord we are talking about here. This is full cord measurements!

 After the first winter of dragging in snow-covered wood, we decided come spring we would make this covered wood shed.  Please bear in mind that we lived in a place with 162 inches annually of snow accumulation.   However, 40 cord weighs a lot, so another friend came in with his backhoe and dug us a deep foundation.

 Along comes our conservation friend, who is a very funny guy, but a non-drinker.  Looking at this huge hole that is now 14 ft. wide, 10 ft. deep and 28 ft. long, he says, “Wow, that would make a great root cellar”.  “ Root cellar, heck,” says I, “ that would make a great wine cellar!”

 At that time, I had been making wine and beer for about 8 years. Even got so good at it, two local newspapers had me writing “home vintner” columns for them.  So now I became very serious about this hole.

 The top of our mountain, many, many years ago, had been cleared off for cows and had grown back some.  In several parts of the property, wherever there was a gully, these areas were filled with wonderful stone that had been cleared from the meadows and pastures.. (Shades of Helen and Scott Nearing!)

 About 50-60 ft. from the back of the soon to be constructed wood shed, was one such gully.  So we said to our kids, in our true Tom Sawyer style of instruction, “we are going to build a wine cellar. It will be lots of fun.   Go forth and bring back many friends!   P.S. we are paying cash!”

About the same time I heard the quote from Vincent Price, I read about Helen and Scott Nearing’s method of stonewall building.

 For you new comers, here it is.  Put a few strong 2x4 or 4x4 poles in the ground where you want your wall to be. (remember if it is a free standing wall, you need to do this on both sides of the wall)  We only had to do it on our face side, because our hole had dirt on 3 sides and our house foundation on the 4^th side.

 Get some 2 x 6 or 2x8 ft boards, as long as you want your wall to be. We used 14 footers because our inside total length was 28 ft.  Screw those on to the upright posts. Mix your cement and put in a layer on the ground, throw in a layer of stone, add cement, add stone and build up your layers.  Just like frosting a cake!  We had our posts put about 30 inches in from the dirt walls because we needed a strong foundation for the woodshed.

 We had the mill cut us a 16 inch wide 2x8, 14 ft. long and when that was filled almost to the top, we would stop, let it sit for 24 hours, then come out and remove the screws, raise the board to the next level, screw it back in and start the process all over again.  Thusly, we worked our way around the interior of this huge hole.

 Just remember when you do this yourself, to analyze the width wall you are building and that will determine how wide and thick your boards are. Also consider not to build more than 2 or 3 ft. height at a time.  The concrete needs to cure and any higher than that will probably take more than 24 hours before you can move your boards.   In 24 hours the concrete is not totally cured, but cured enough to go onto your next level. 

Well, our kids, hied themselves back and in their true Tom Sawyer style convinced all their friends that this was going to be a lot of fun. Plus we were paying a penny a rock if you had one in each hand and 5 cents a rock if it took two hands and almost doubled you over to carry it. (O.K., we probably broke several child labor laws, but we kept many kids out of our local pool hall, except we did not have a local pool hall.)  This pay included all the soft drinks you needed and a great lunch each day.

Never, hinder a child’s mind.  The average age was about 12 or 13 and most were boys.  This was in an area with very poor T.V. reception, before cable, satellite and “game boy” and pre-girl friends.  These kids were pretty game for anything that was out of the norm.

Our 12 year old son, Fred was a real creative guy. (we lost him, at the age of 40,  Aug. 21, 2000 when he unexpectedly died from chemical exposure from serving in Desert Storm). At any rate, Fred found an old drum, and had Carl cut it in half, long ways, with the welding equipment.  Then Fred, the scrounger,  (he was the only guy in Desert Storm for 6 months that had a shower rigged up and managed to have water for it.)  found some cable which he and his other friends hooked from a big oak tree behind the gully,  to our house and they now had a system to bring tons of rock in and get paid faster with less effort.  These kids were really cooking!  The gully end was higher than the house end and that drum would fly down! Empty they hauled it back with a rope.

It took 9 weekends to build this underground wine cellar that became the foundation for the much needed 40-cord woodshed.  It truly was an experience for every one of all ages.  When walking down memory lane, one of them will always remember that adventure.

Prior to putting the roof of the wine room on or the floor of the woodshed, whichever you want to call it, we poured some gravel in for the wine room floor.

When we put the roof/or floor on top of it, we made sure we had some real heavy beams cut at the mill because we were going to have the weight of the 40 cord of wood on it.

Here are some old pictures of what the final project lookedlike.  That’s Carl and me in 1974

By now our minds were running rampant and everyone was on hand when it came to the time of breaking through our house foundation into the wine room.  No one involved wanted to miss having a swing with the sledgehammer!  From 7 year olds on up to us old folks. 

Carl made sure that the entry hole was not a rectangle. The top of the door way was a 3 sided angle.  He built a door from rough milled 2 x 4’s and one side they laid at a vertical pattern, he then laid in a large piece of styrofoam and laid the other side of the 2 x 4’s at a rectangular pattern. He had a door about 6 inches thick and very well insulated.  After installing with sturdy hinges, it needed a handle and a locking mechanism.

True to Carl’s artistic form, he got out his welding equipment, cut up the side of an old washing machine he was getting ready to take to the dump and he cut out an impressive bunch of grapes, complete with 3 dimensional leaves and tendrils.  He then spray painted it black.  What a beauty!   It took two hands to turn this piece of art and unlock this wonderful door to enter into our pretty “cool” world of home made wine and beer.

When we needed some lights, Carl stopped at the old cheese factory and got 3 large cheddar cheese round boxes for free.  When he brought them home, he drilled some holes in the sides in the design of grapes and glued purple and green piece of glass on the inside of them.  They were great looking when he got them wired and hung.

This became such a fun project and was so incredible, when finished, that one of the local newspapers sent someone up to do an article about it.  We didn’t care about that, what we now had was something that kept a 50° temperature all year long!  We had great storage not only for wine, but for anything else we wanted to keep cool.  Plus one of the greatest conversation pieces around.  My wine making now started to take on serious proportions and hopefully in the future I can share some of my good techniques and recipes with you on this page. 

Although I no longer make wine, writing this article has given me lots of pleasant memories.  Hopefully, this article will trigger and fire up something in your imagination and start you on some project you have been putting off or dreaming of starting.  

Remember what Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with saying, “ Start doing what is necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

Just email me with any questions or if you are in the area, stop in and say hello.   Please remember to ……

“Tread the Earth Lightly”… and in the meantime… may your day be filled with…

Peace, Light and Love,

Arlene W. Correll