They Said His Steaming Manure Pile Was Disgusting — Until It Heated His Cabin to 70° for Six Months

They Mocked His Manure Pile—Until It Kept His Cabin Warm All Winter Without a Single Log

Price County, Wis. — Winter of 1886–87

In the fall of 1886, as homesteaders across northern Wisconsin prepared for another brutal winter, most followed the same routine their neighbors had practiced for generations: cut trees, split firewood, and stack it high enough to last six months of relentless cold.

Ander Svenson did something very different.

Instead of sharpening axes, the 38-year-old Swedish immigrant spent September hauling wagonload after wagonload of horse manure, hay, and wood chips. By early October, he had piled nearly 20 tons of steaming organic material directly against the north wall of his small log cabin. Buried deep inside the mound was a spiral of copper pipe, connected through the wall to a water tank beside his stove.

To his neighbors, the sight was revolting—and alarming.

“He’s gone mad,” one mill worker said at the general store in Phillips. Others warned that the moisture would rot the cabin wall, attract rats, or poison the air inside. Some openly questioned Svenson’s judgment and his family’s safety.

What no one expected was that the foul-smelling pile would heat his cabin to a steady 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit for six straight months—without burning a single log for warmth.

Old Knowledge from the Old Country

Svenson had arrived in Wisconsin in 1882, part of a wave of Swedish immigrants drawn to the promise of land and independence in the American Midwest. He came from central Sweden, where long winters had forced rural communities to develop practical, efficient ways to conserve heat.

Before emigrating, Svenson had worked for several years on a large Swedish estate, where massive compost heaps were used to warm greenhouses through the winter. The principle was simple but powerful: as organic material decomposes, billions of microorganisms release heat. In large volumes, that heat can be intense and long-lasting.

Back in Sweden, estate workers had taken the idea further, running copper pipes through compost piles to circulate hot water into greenhouse beds. Svenson watched the system operate winter after winter. He learned the ratios, the moisture levels, and the importance of airflow. He saw that a properly built compost mound could maintain internal temperatures well above 130 degrees for months.

When Svenson reached Wisconsin, he was stunned by what he saw.

Lumber camps burned enormous amounts of firewood just to keep bunkhouses livable. Mountains of sawdust and wood chips were left to rot. Farms produced endless manure piles that steamed uselessly behind barns.

“To Svenson, the waste itself looked like fuel,” one later account noted.

Building a Biological Furnace

In 1886, after saving enough money from lumber work, Svenson purchased 40 acres east of Phillips and built a modest log cabin. That summer, he quietly prepared his heating experiment.

He sealed the cabin’s north wall—the side that took the worst winter winds—with pine tar and multiple layers of oil cloth to protect the logs from moisture. He acquired roughly 200 feet of copper tubing and fashioned it into a large coil designed to sit at the center of a compost mound.

Construction began in early September. Svenson layered the materials carefully: coarse wood chips for drainage, followed by manure and hay in precise proportions. Each layer was watered to the consistency of a wrung-out sponge—moist, but never soaked. The copper coil was positioned deep in the core, where temperatures would be highest.

By the end of the month, the mound stood eight feet tall and stretched 20 feet along the cabin wall.

It smelled exactly as bad as everyone predicted—at first.

“The odor was unbearable for two weeks,” recalled a neighbor years later. “You could smell it from half a mile.”

Then, as Svenson expected, the smell faded. As thermophilic bacteria took over, the decomposition process became cleaner and hotter. The odor shifted from barnyard stench to something closer to warm forest soil.

Inside the cabin, the change was unmistakable.

By mid-October, hot water was circulating naturally through the pipes into the iron tank inside the cabin, driven by the simple physics of hot water rising and cooler water sinking. No pump was needed. The tank radiated gentle, even warmth into the room.

The Test of Winter

Early November brought the first hard freeze. While neighbors fed their stoves through the night, Svenson let his fire go out.

By morning, the cabin thermometer still read 65 degrees.

January 1887 brought one of the coldest stretches in Price County history. Temperatures plunged to minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Chimneys cracked. Woodpiles vanished at alarming speed. One bachelor logger reportedly burned furniture and floorboards to survive.

At the Svenson cabin, the thermometer never dropped below 63.

The compost mound’s core remained above 130 degrees throughout the cold snap. Hot water entered the cabin tank at temperatures near 90 degrees, day and night. The family slept through every night without waking to feed a fire.

When Friedrich Hoffman, a neighboring German farmer and one of Svenson’s harshest critics, finally visited during the coldest week, he was stunned.

“The warmth wasn’t harsh like a roaring stove,” Hoffman later said. “It filled the whole room evenly. No cold floors. No smoke.”

Svenson showed him his records—daily measurements of outside temperature, mound core heat, water temperature, and indoor air. While outside temperatures swung wildly, the biological system barely fluctuated.

From Ridicule to Replication

Word spread quickly. Families displaced by heating failures sought refuge in the Svenson cabin. Farmers arrived with notebooks, asking questions instead of laughing.

By spring, several neighbors committed to building their own compost heating systems. Svenson taught them freely, emphasizing that the mixture and moisture mattered more than anything else.

“Knowledge hoarded heats one house,” he reportedly said. “Knowledge shared heats a county.”

By 1900, variations of the system appeared across northern Wisconsin. Agricultural journals wrote about the “Swedish compost method.” The Wisconsin Agricultural Extension invited Svenson to speak to farmers about biological heating.

When his original cabin was dismantled decades later, the north wall—once pressed against manure year after year—was found to be dry and sound, without rot.

A Forgotten Lesson

Today, compost-based heating is recognized in modern biomass systems and large-scale composting facilities. But in 1887, it was one immigrant farmer’s quiet defiance of convention that proved winter could be beaten without fire.

While others chopped wood in the dark, Ander Svenson slept.

And the pile they called disgusting turned out to be one of the warmest ideas in the county.