Agricultural building

“ The first farm visited consists of 360 hectares (just upon 900 acres) , all in the highest cultivation, and conducted strictly on the footing of a large industrial concern, with offices, counting-house, carpenters', saddlers' and wheelwrights' shops, smithies, mills and machinery, every agricultural process down to grinding the corn being performed on the premises, and by workmen in the employ of the owner.
As we enter these vast premises, and hear the buzz of machinery, we feel the complete prosaicization of rustic life. ”

“ Every out-building upon the farm, let it be devoted to what purpose it may, having a wooden floor on the 56 ground story, should be set up sufficiently high from the surface to admit a cat or small terrier dog beneath such floor, with openings for them to pass in and out, or these hiding places will become so many rat warrens upon the premises, and prove most destructive to the grain and poultry. Nothing can be more annoying to the farmer than these vermin, and a trifling outlay in the beginning, will exclude them from the foundations and walls of all buildings. ”

“ Having essayed to instruct our agricultural friends in the proper modes of erecting their houses, and providing for their convenient accommodation within them, a few remarks may be pardoned touching such collateral subjects of embellishment as may be connected with the farm residence in the way of plantations and grounds in their immediate vicinity.
We are well aware that small farms do not permit any considerable appropriation of ground to waste purposes, as such spots are usually called which are occupied with wood, or the shade of open trees, near the dwelling. ”

“ As a matter of fact, as erosion of the soil progresses, as good, productive land becomes more scarce, and as farm labor becomes more and more difficult to employ, the attention of informed farm owners and operators has been turning more and more to soil-building, perennial, permanent and labor-saving crops. Of these, grass and tree crops are, far and away, the most promising today. ”

“ What is needed in agriculture to charm the population back to the fields, and to double the production of the soil, is to substitute suitable buildings at the centre of an agricultural township for unsuitable, straggling farm-houses and barns, and to replace solitary labor on farms by the modern method of organized industry, applied to the cultivation of a domain large enough to permit selection of soils and the use of adequate machinery. ”

“ The farm-house expands, shuts up again, turns itself completely round, a window winks at you for an instant under one of the gables, and then disappears; presently the farm-house itself vanishes, and a rough, half-shaved corn-field, with sturdy sheaves of wheat staggering about its back, comes running up out of a coppice to overtake the farm. ”

“ Grain growing has become completely out-of-door work, from seeding to sending to market. The day of building two-story barns for storing and threshing wheat, barley and oats is over, I am persuaded, in this country. A quadrangle of slate-roofed cow-sheds, for housing horses and cattle, will displace the old-fashioned barns, each with its rood of roof. ”

“ The outside walls of the main buildings are to be of buff-brick, trimmed with stone, and the roofs are to be finished with steel and concrete structure, covered with tiles. It is anticipated that the buildings, with their setting, will constitute as fine a group as has been seen in connection with any agricultural institution on the continent. ”

“ High, large buildings require far less outside boarding and roof than small, low, detached buildings which contain, together, the same storage capacity. Economy in construction and maintenance, convenience of temporarily sheltering and removing manures, ease of [254] carrying on work in the building, and beauty, all indicate the wisdom of adopting the concentrated method in the construction of farm barns.
Efforts have been made to economize in barn construction by adopting the octagon form. ”

“ At noon they drove into her first farmyard, a private village, a white house with no porches save a low and quite dirty stoop at the back, a crimson barn with white trimmings, a glazed brick silo, an ex-carriage-shed, now the garage of a Ford, an unpainted cow-stable, a chicken-house, a pig-pen, a corn-crib, a granary, the galvanized-iron skeleton tower of a wind-mill. The dooryard was of packed yellow clay, treeless, barren of grass, littered with rusty plowshares and wheels of discarded cultivators. Hardened trampled mud, like lava, filled the pig-pen. ”

“ We know of no good reason why the walls of a farm house should appear like a hay rick, or its roof like the thatched covering to his wheat stacks, because such are the shapes best adapted to preserve his crops, any more than the grocer's habitation should be made to imitate a tea chest, or the shipping merchant's a rum puncheon, or cotton bale. We have an idea that the farmer, or the planter, according to his means and requirements, should be as well housed and accommodated, and in as agreeable style, too, as any other class of community ”

“ Double yards are desirable where space can be given for them; they allow a rotation of green crops, which cleanses and sweetens the ground, and converts the excrement which would become a source of danger into a valuable food crop. The shape of the fields, the slope of the land, and the location of other farm buildings will have much to do with the shape of the yards [Pg 5] and mode of access to the poultry buildings. Generally the yards should be long and narrow, so as to make cultivation easy. ”

“ If one builds too large or too many buildings he is eaten up by the expense of maintenance, while if one builds less than the farm requires the harvest is lost, for there is no doubt that the largest wine cellar must be provided for that farm on which the vintages are largest, or granary, if it is a grain farm. ”

“ In warm weather the gable doors may be left open night and day, and the draught through the loft, together with the ventilation through open doors and windows in the house below, keeps the birds cool and comfortable. These houses are thoroughly practical in every way and will be found very desirable for use on any large farm. A few such scattered in convenient localities will give good opportunity to rotate crops and poultry, and so gain a two-fold profit from the land and at the same time avoid all danger of the soil becoming poisoned by accumulation of the droppings. ”

“ His residence is as complete and modern as a city home and is a monument to the enterprise and progressive spirit of the owner. Everything about his place is kept in good repair and fences divide the farm into fields of convenient size, so that the work is carried on more advantageously. He utilizes the latest improved machinery to facilitate the work of plowing, planting and harvesting, and in wheat production he displays the most progressive methods in handling the crop, which is a very large one, as the soil is excellently adapted for the production of that cereal. ”

“ Arrangement of farm buildings—A great deal of labour is saved by an economical arrangement of the various compartments of a building. The various parts should be so compacted that operations dependent on each other, or following in consecutive order, should be performed in immediate proximity; and the saving of all unnecessary labour, as well as the prompt and rapid execution of work, ought always to be kept prominently in view. ”

“ The farm-house was a low long building, under the same roof as the cow-house and stable, and as the whole was covered with a black mass of rotten thatch, composed of varied patches of half-perished straw and fern, the only signs of its being inhabited by humanity were a chimney, with two or three farm implements lying at the hovel door. ”

“ Thirdly, a mere comparison of the relative prices of grazing and agricultural products cannot explain the fact that conversion of open-field land to pasture continued throughout the seventeenth century in spite of prices which made it profitable for landowners at the same time to convert a large amount of grass-land to tillage, including enclosures which had formerly been taken from the common fields. ”

“ Ground, in the country, being the cheapest item which the farmer can devote to building purposes, his object should be to spread over, rather than to go deeply into it, or climb high in the air above it. We repudiate cellar kitchens, or under-ground rooms for house work, altogether, as being little better than a nuisance—dark, damp, unhealthy, inconvenient, and expensive. The several rooms of a farm dwelling house should be compact in arrangement, and contiguous as may be to the principally-occupied apartments. Such arrangement is cheaper, more convenient, and labor-saving ”

“ The clearing was clothed in soft, late, second-growth grass, and had plainly been mown at haying time and pastured on since. In it we found some well-built, well-thatched farm-buildings: a sheepfold, a goatpen, a cowshed, a strongly built structure like a granary or store-house, another like a repository for wine-jars and oil-jars; hovels such as all mountain farms have for slave-quarters and a house or cabin little better than a hut, mud-walled, like the other buildings, but new thatched. ”

“ Another modern necessity is the provision of larger accommodation and better arrangements for preparing and mixing food for cattle. The substitution of covered for open yards also progresses, surely if slowly. And in the changes which are going on, matters affecting the ventilation, lighting, paving, and draining of farm buildings are meeting with the full share of attention which they deserve. ”

“ In rear of the premises rise the outbuildings; stables, corn-crib, meat-house, &c., all of them quite as perfect in structure as the dwelling itself, and quite as comfortable for residence. If to all this we add a well, walled up with a section of a hollow cotton-wood, a cellar or cave in the earth for a pantry, a zigzag rail fence enclosing the whole clearing, a dozen acres of Indian corn bristling up beyond, a small garden and orchard, and a host of swine, cattle, poultry, and naked children about the door, and the tout ensemble of a backwoods farmhouse is complete. ”

“ A house of this kind can be simply, economically, and conveniently built, and well supplies the conditions for successful poultry keeping; we recently visited a dairy and poultry farm in Connecticut where house room for one hundred and fifty head of laying-breeding stock had been built in the lee of and annexed to the dairy barns and sheds. A good prepared roofing, such as “Paroid,” makes quite shallow and low lean-to roofs easy of construction, both air and water-tight, and very durable. ”

“ On these farms every advantage of machinery, and every discovery in agricultural science, should be utilised [140] to the utmost. The crops should be carefully chosen with reference to soil and aspect—cereals, fruit, vegetables—and the culture adapted to the crop, the one aim being to obtain the largest amount of produce with the least expenditure of human labor. Whether land is most profitably cultivated in large or small parcels depends on the crop; and in the great area of the County Farm, la grande et la petite culture might each have its place. ”

“ As good roads invite settlement, so population, the great promoter of the value of land, has come in rapidly, and changed the aspect of every farm-house. Good fences line the roadside, rank hedge-rows have disappeared, new farm-houses have been everywhere built, low lands have been drained, manures have been imported from the cities, wheat is now the staple winter-grain, rye has ceased to be cultivated, and rye bread is now a mere reminiscence of the old dispensation. ”

“ The later farmers, with less patience but possibly more enterprise, are running away from them to the smoother fields and richer mould of the Western prairies. We can do better than either; for, wherever found, they may be used most favorably, not only for foundation walls that are deeply hidden from mortal view, but for the main walls of the entire building,—favorably, not only in point of economy and strength, but with most admirable result as to external appearance. ”

“ In the structure of the barn, and in its interior accommodation, much will depend upon the branches of 287 agriculture to which the farm is devoted. A farm cultivated in grain chiefly, requires but little room for stabling purposes. Storage for grain in the sheaf, and granaries, will require its room; while a stock farm requires a barn with extensive hay storage, and stables for its cattle, horses, and sheep, in all climates not admitting such stock to live through the winter in the field, like the great grazing states west of the Alleghanies. ”

“ All along the railroad one sees primitive agricultural methods. The old-fashioned threshing floor is in common use, but instead of the flail they employ a machine resembling a light disc harrow, which is hitched to a pair of mules and drawn rapidly round and round. When the wheat is separated from the straw, men go over the threshing floor and winnow out the wheat, the wind blowing away the chaff. We were informed that they had had a prosperous year in the grain districts, but the stubble did not indicate as heavy a crop as we raise in the United States. ”

“ Each system of husbandry, too, will give prominence to certain departments of the homestead. Thus in a dairy farm, the cow-house and the dairy offices are the chief feature. On a fattening farm, prominence must be given to boxes and covered yards, and to the arrangements for preparing food. On a mixed farm, which generally partakes of all systems, the buildings must be more numerous, and suited in some respects to all purposes. ”