Barnyard Trail: Woodshed

The woodshed was repurposed from an old smokehouse.

NPS/Sucena

“At the time there was no heater in the old house... Never had any coal. All wood. The old wood pile was just north east from the kitchen door, and just to the south of that stood the smoke house where I used to smoke the hams, chops and shoulders...”

- Charles H. Ross, 1913 

The small structure standing before you housed firewood for over 100 years. It was likely adapted from a pig sty which originally stood here. Long before electricity and heating were common features within homes, firewood was a critical resource for keeping warm throughout frigid Long Island winters.  

Mundane though a woodshed may seem, its importance was not lost upon the residents of the Old Mastic House. Cornelia Floyd Nichols remembered: 

“Here are oak, hickory, cedar and apple waiting to yield up the sunshine of many years on our hearth. This is seasoned wood. It has fulfilled all the processes that nature has ordained for complete maturity. Perhaps that is the reason we so often sought the woodshed in moments of stress. To find the right pigeonhole for a grievance, for meditation, or for a good cry, it was an aromatic place of healing.”