'The Soddy' - 1950 memoir (Gordon: house, living in, kindergarten)

[BereniceUK]

The Soddy

Building, and living in, a home made of slabs of sod in Holt County in 1881.

Does anyone still have the knowledge and skill to build a soddy? Do they still exist?

[itsMeFred]

My 8th grade social studies teacher built a soddy one year when I was in about kindergarten. With his 8th grade class, that is. They built it out on the playground.

BTW, soddies not only still exist, some are still lived in. Those that are, though are usually plastered both inside and out. Additionally, they have standard wood-framed roofs. So really, it just looks like a stuccoed house with thick walls.
We had a neighbor when we lived south of Gordon, NE (about 10 years ago) who lived in a soddy his grandpa had built on his Kinkaid claim.

[Gunluvver2]

My Grandfather homesteaded in Cheyenne County in NW Kansas in the 1880's. The first house he built was a soddy. After a few years he built a small frame home about 100 feet from the soddy and he used the soddy as a milk separating parlor. The soddy was still standing after my Grandmother remarried in 1957 and moved to Bird City. During the 1960's all the farmstead buildings were torn down so crops could be planted. As a kid I remember making the run to the outhouse on cold nights and stopping in at the soddy to get out of the wind. There were always candles and matches in the soddy and with two or three candles lit you could stay fairly warm. Even the roof was sod and the only cold air was what came in under the door. I remember cutting new sod with my Dad and patching the roof. Of course that Buffalo Grass sod has been plowed under and is very scarce now.
Buffalo Grass has a very tight root system. Sod blocks might be 6 inches thick so they could be heavy. I wonder what the R-Value of a one foot thick sod wall is? I would guess about R-30 or better.

GL2