How Appalachian Families Heated Their Homes Before the Power Lines Ever Came

How Appalachian Families Heated Their Homes Before the Power Lines Ever Came Feel that first cold snap roll down off the ridge and most of us just bump the thermostat up a notch, pour some coffee, and let the furnace do the rest. But it wasn't but a few generations back that nobody in these mountains had that option. No electricity, no natural gas, no propane truck coming up the holler once a month. Water came from a spring or a dug well, and the bathroom was a walk out back no matter the weather. Keeping a family alive and warm through a mountain winter back then wasn't something you flipped a switch for, it was something you worked at every single day starting in the spring before the first frost of the next winter had even crossed anybody's mind. It touched every part of how a family lived, where they slept, what they ate, how the whole household was built in the first place, not just what kept the chill off of an evening. So I want to walk through exactly how they did it, the building, the cutting, the hauling, and just how much of it there really was, because once you see the whole picture laid out, that little bump of the thermostat starts looking like the small miracle it actually is. #appalachian #appalachia