Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Lights on the Farm Berore REC?

I was born in 1947, in a house that my Dad drug about a half mile on logs, with His Ford tractor, to where He could hook up to the electric line. My Sister that is 3 years older than me was born back where the house was originally. Square, 4 room house. Thinking back, that tractor might have been a Fordson. miles

Propane is less dense than butane, but It’s still denser than air. It still settles in low pockets.

How the hell did people survive without weather reports?

Jim, Butane boils at around 32 degrees F and Propane at -44 degrees F making Butane a poor choice for the northern climes.

I understand they still may use Butane in some places down south?

I know this thread is old, but I just related a story to my adult sons that is pertinent.

In the early sixties my grandfather bought a rural piece of property and they were living in a '60s era travel trailer - very small. It was powered only by butane.
Dad and granddad were out doing some work on the tractor and Mom and I were with Granny in the trailer. Granny was making some biscuits for breakfast. She lit the oven with a match and closed the door for it to heat. When she opened it thinking it would be ready for the biscuits she found out it was still cold, so she struck another match.
Dad and granddad heard the explosion and arrived to find the door blown off the hinges, and the rest of the trailer looking like an aluminum can that had a firecracker popped inside of it!

Granny was burned a bit, but we were overall okay. Our ears did ring for a few days after that!

On a neighboring farmstead. now just a cowcamp, they had a Sears and Roebuck house. Parts of their wind generator are still attached to the house, and the glass jars that housed the 8 volt batteries that the charger powered are still there. I am told that they used the power for lights only. On my own place, homesteaded by my grandfather in 1911, before electricity came in 1952 they used kerosene lamps and white gasoline lamps for lights. The gas lamps were like a Coleman lantern sans the globe. The dual mantles were exposed. I still have those lamps in an outbuilding where they were stored after electricity came to the farm. My family were all readers, and think they burned quite a bit of both fuels for light in the evening.

Grandma cooked on the wood/coal range till the 1940s, when "bottled gas" or propane was adopted for a new gas range. I believe 100 lb bottles were used. Parts of the regulator were attached to the house on the east wall of the kitchen when I was a kid in the 60s. When electricity came, the gas stove was replaced by an electric range.

One poster commented on weather reports....indeed a good thing with modern technology. The old timers could read the sky, and their barometer, with skill. But it's not the same as Doppler radar.

I haven't seen butane anywhere in Mississippi in about 20 years. I remember as a kid most people used butane and all the tanks were buried in the ground to keep it from freezing.

When I was a kid, all the butane tanks were above ground. Then they said you had to bury the tanks. Why, I dont know, but they refused to fill an above ground tank. After a few years, they found the tanks were rusting in the ground and leaking, so they changed the rules again. All the tanks had to be above ground, or they wouldn't fill them.

I haven't seen butane in 50 years or more. I remember Dad changing the jets in the stove, water heater, and space heaters, so they would burn the propane like they should. Wasn't many years after they changed to propane that we got natural gas.

I understand butane is good on city busses.

I started working for a Co. in 1977 and one of the older men who lived on a farm a few miles out of town, told me once that he had just gotten electric service a couple of years before.
Another farmer who worked there told me that while he was a child that his family didn't have a well for water... they carried their water from a spring. This would have probably have been 60-70 years ago as he is still living and I see him and his wife from time to time.