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The "V" shaped thing on the left is an ash hopper. Settlers would dump their fireplace ashes into these hoppers, pour water through (I think) and this would leach out the lye. The lye, in turn, was used in making soap. The bread oven was good sized. The director of the museum told me that my Bubba would get up at the crack of dawn to come over and get the cook fires going and the fire in the bread oven started, so that they'd be ready when the other reenactors arrived for their BackCountry Homestead weekend presentations.