Cypress Cistern

I find  cypress wood cisterns a fasinating bit of Americana.  These cisterns were used(mostly prior to 1950) in two basic ways. Some stored water pumped up out of the ground by windmill and some were storage for rainwater that ran into them from a gutter system on a house or barn.  I have in mind to find an old cistern that I can purchase, move it to our backyard and restore it to collect rainwater from a yet to be built gutter system on my workshop.   The search continues...............

Near Bracken, Texas

Near Solms, Texas

wooden cistern

Still hunting for a wooden cistern that is in good enough condition that it can be moved to our backyard and restored to it's original purpose. I spotted this cistern from the roadside near Stockdale.  Owner is considering my offer. 

Historical home gets a new life

 Built in 1861(historical marker tells the story), the Johann Stautzenberger home in the Dietz community near Clear Springs, Texas  had been long abandoned and for most people the house was surely seen as beyond repair.  But not in the eyes of friends, Sherman and Joy Schlichting, who decided that this is a piece of history that needs to be preserved and have set out on a journey to bring it back to life. When you see this house up close, you can't help but say to yourself .. "I wish these walls could talk." 

The historial marker tells the story of the Dietz community and the house

The roof had to be removed before the house could be moved to a new location

Where the exterior boards have fallen away you can see the mud brick insulation that was used during this time period in the German communities in this area.

Look inside and you can see the cedar support beams in the interior wall

Mud Bricks were literally mud poured into a brick shaped mold and left to dry then used as wall insulation. These mud bricks used by the early German settlers of our area contained no binding material like straw...

January landscaping projects

  Railroad ties removed from garden were used for building steps going up the big gully

                                       Brush cleared going down the creek

                                    Brush cleared on opposite bank from our lot





   

Salvaged cinder blocks surrounding two sections of garden

Evans Salvage

My plans for the day immediately changed when I happened to drive through Clear Springs and noticed they were tearing down an old house.  A closer inspection and a phone call later and I was busy salvaging these homemade cinder blocks. They caught my eye because they were made to look like stone yet they were concrete. I thought pretty cool and old and I need border material for my garden. It turns out that they were quiet heavy which put by back to the test but I managed to haul off 44 of them(70 lbs each) plus 8 corner L-shaped pieces which were even heavier.

With the hauling behind me, I decide to do some research on this type of construction... One thing led to another and I found that on-site concrete cinder block construction began in 1905 with a patent of the first easy to use reusable mold. It turns out that the  cinder blocks that I salvaged were popularized in 1917 when Sears mailed out a special catalog that advertised the mold. Sears advertised that the mold produced concrete cinder blocks that were (1)Fire Resistant, (2)less expensive to lay than brick, and (3) the blocks imitate quarried stone.  On-site concrete cinder block construction remained in use until the late 1920s.

Too bad that the old house had to be torn down, but I will put these blocks to good use.