1878. 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



69 



THE MENNONITE GRASS-BURNER. 



HY PROF. J. D. nUTLKI!. 



No house in W:ishiiigton is such ;i .Trtpanese 

 go 111 as the lioiiie of tJeiu^rnl Iloriicc ('apron. 

 Tliis sfiitlfinii'i, K"i"g '■^> Japan in 1S71, took 

 Willi liini liis carriage and horses, lie was 

 soon requested to lend his turn-out to Ihc 

 Emperor, and then invited to the palace, 

 ■where his majesty said to him : "Sir! I have 

 sent for you to thank you personally for intro- 



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ducing such animals into my country. I 

 never knew before that they existed on the 

 face of the earth." The General was then 

 employed to put up a flouring mill — as bread 

 was no less unknown than horses to the 

 Japanese. Nor were his rolls less welcome 

 than his roadsters. He also built a saw-mill 

 wliich cut twelve thou.sand feet daily — which 

 was all that six hundred sawyers could do. 

 Among other services he showed how to can 

 salmon, and so rendered their fishery ten times 

 more valuable than it had been. 



He had his reward. Everything rich 

 and rare tliat had l)een garnered up in 

 the imperial treasure-house was lavished 

 upon him, and he came home laden with 

 the spoils of the farthest East. 



If Republicans were as rich as the 

 Mikado, the Nebraskahs would bestow a 

 similar testimonial on the Mennonites 

 who have settled among them. Those 

 Ru.ssiau exiles have introduced a variety 

 of fuel which will prove as great a boon 

 to prairie States as horses or mills to 

 Japan. They have demonstrated that 

 every farmer may find on his own home- 

 stead, if not a coal mine, yet whatever 

 he needs to burn on his hearth. 

 Russian Reports. 



Though I was long ago a traveler in 

 Russia, my attention was never called to 

 the Russian style of heating until 1S7.'!. 

 In that year, being on a western tour, I 

 fell in with seven Mennonite deputies in 

 quest of a new home for their iico|ile. 

 who for conscience's sake were forced to 

 leave their old one on the Black Sea. « 

 We were together in various parts ol> ! 

 Nebraska. Along the Republican and ' 

 smaller streams wo found a good growth 

 of timber, but every acre it stood on had 

 been snapped up either by settlers or 

 speculators. 



Much to my astonishment I discovered 

 that my comjianions liked the country. 



In talking with German squatters whoui 



we had called upon, they had ascertained tliat 

 the crop was twice as large as that where they 

 came from. "When I asked, "what will you 

 do for fuel?" their answer was: "Look 

 around. We see it ready to our hands in 

 every straw stack and on every prairie. Grass 

 and straw are what we, and our fathers before 

 us, have always used." We passed one even- 

 ing by a brick kiln in Crete, which was fired 

 up with coal. They remarked to me that they 

 Qould burn brick without either coal or wood. 



Personal Observations. 



Thejr report on tlieir return to Europe was 

 such as to bring a tluuisand of their co-roli- 

 gioiiists into Nebraska. And while a large 

 numlier of tliose people have gone into ^lani- 

 toba, Minneswta, Kansas and Dakota, it is 

 true, 1 think, that the best cla.ss have made 

 their homes in Noljraska, and in that State 

 are to be found th(^ most prosjjerous colonies. 

 Two of tlieir seltlenienls there I clianced to 

 visit last autumn — one near IJeatrice, on the 

 Big Blue, and the other farther west \n York 

 county. Mindful of my conver.salioMs four 

 years before, my first inipiiry was regarding 

 fuel, and the mode of using it. In every 

 house 1 entered, my curiosity was gratiliod. 

 The first dinner I ate cooked with grass, 1 sot 

 down as a novelty in my experience. A few 

 wiu'ds of mine concerning the Mennonite de- 

 vii'e for cooking and heating were inserted in 

 a letter which appeared in the Chicago 'J'inus 

 last October, and in a pamphlet entitled a 

 " September Scamper. " This notice has over- 

 whelmed me with letters begging for further 

 particulars, not onlj' from various Stales but 

 from aljroad, and even from New Zealand. 

 These letters 1 could not answer, even with a 

 manifold letter-writer, and 1 have, therefore, 

 prepared the present circular, which the post- 

 oflice can scatter like snow- flakes. 

 The Mennonite Heater. 



The grass furnace or stove is nothing costly, 

 or complicated, or likely to get out of order. 

 On the other hand it is a contrivance so siuiplo 

 that many will say of it as'oiie man did when 

 he first saw a I'ailroad track : " Nobody but a 

 fool could have thought of so simi)le a tiling I" 

 In a word, as the Irishman made a cannon by 

 taking a large hole and pouring iron around 

 it, so the Mennonite UKjlher of food and 

 warmth is developed by piling brick or stones 

 round a hollow. 



Aware that such generalities are too vague, 

 I will make my description more specific, and 

 since the eye catches in an instant wliat the 

 ear cannot learn in an hour, I have also had a 



SIDE VIEW OF THE 



"MENNONITE GRASS - BURNER," 



central as jio.ssible, because heat tends to 

 diftu.se itself on all sides alike. 



Furnaces will, of course, vary in size with 

 the size of houses. A good model is that 

 shown in the diagraTU. Its length is live feet, 

 its height six, and its width two and a half. 

 The bricks employed are about six hundred, 

 unless the walls bi'of extraordinary thickness. 

 The structure may be said to have six stories. 

 1, the a.sh-box ; 2, the lire-box ; 3, the oven ; 

 4, smoke passage; 5, hot air chamber ; C, 

 GEOUND PLAN OF HOUSE, 



Showliii; Locitfoa of ?tinuco. 



n 



KITCHEN 





♦ F.^^ 



SITTING ROOM 



OR 



^ TWO 



BED ROOMS 





STORE AND WOOD ROOM 



EXPLANATIONS! 

 1 ,1) Furnncp Door 



to Kire-Box. 

 (B) LowtT open- 

 ID*^, at) Bbowu in 

 Hide, aud uncd 

 for cuoking 

 place. 

 t C) Heating or 

 upper opeulog 

 nu bittliii; HKim 

 or bud r o u m 

 Bido. 



a chimney or to a 



Farnace Door to Fire-Bux. 



Draft. 



Pipe. 



Chamber with Iron Shutter (hinged) to let 



out heat. Thip chamber has doors on both 



sides of Furnace. 

 Oven or cooking place on Kitchen Bide of 



Furnace. 



B -^^ 



Til 



J L 



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diagram prepared which will render the whole 

 mystery plain and level to the lowest capacity. 

 (Sec diagrams. ) 



Construction. 

 The material used for the Russian furnace 

 seems unimportant. Some employ conniion 

 brick, others stone ; one builder told me he 

 preferred to mix one part of sand with two of 

 clay. In his judgm"nt this mixture retained 

 heat longest for radiation through a house. 

 The positiou of the furnace is natiually as 



smoke passage either to 

 drum in an upper room. 



Many (luestions have been a.sked me a.s to 

 the size of the fire or fuel-box. Its length is 

 about four feet, its width and height each 

 about a foot and a half. It is asked, "How 

 is the grass pressed or prepared for the lire- 

 box V" It is not prepared at all, but is thrust 

 in with a fork as one would throw fodder into 

 a rack. Peo)>le suppose they must be putting 

 in this fuel all the time. This is not the 

 fact. At the house of Bishop Peters, 

 (4.SX-27 feet,) which is a large one for a 

 new country, the grass or straw is 

 pitched in for about twenty minutes 

 twice, or at most three times, in twenty- 

 four hours. That amount of tiring up 

 sufliccs both for cooking and comfort. 



It will be observed that the heated air 

 strikes the oven, and also the reservoir 

 of hot air both above and below, and 

 that no jiarticle of hot air reaches the 

 chimney (ill after turning four corners. 

 It works its passage. The iron plates, 

 doors and shutters are such as any 

 foundry can furnish. They are inex- 

 liensive. In a case where I inquired the 

 cost, it was five dollars. 



Present Use — Prospective Utility. 

 Near a score of years ago, when I first 

 pushed west of the Mi.ssouri, my feeling 

 was, " What a corn-and-wheat-growing 

 capability here runs to waste ! What 

 myriads of bull'alocs, too, have been shot 

 merely for the petty dainty of their 

 tongues 1" So now in the light of Men- 

 nonite experience, many a Yankee in 

 Nebraska sees that he h»s thrown away 

 a cooking and warming power that had 

 millions in it. lie long ago laughed at 

 his father smothering bees in order to 

 secure Iheir honev, and at his neihgbor 

 who put into his stove the corn which he 

 might have sold, the same year, for fifty 

 cints a bushel. He now laughs with the 

 other side of his mouth at himself for burning 

 out doors that jirairie i)roducewliich, if burned 

 in doors, would have saved him, too, many a 

 dollar. lie who thus laughs will need no 

 preaching to make him sciuare his i>ractice in 

 the matter of cookery and house-warming ac- 

 cording to the Mennonite plan. His faith will 

 be stronger than ever, that the Providence 

 which created quinine where chills prevail, as 

 well as perfumes where negroes are most 

 numerous, and provided buflfalo-chips for the 



