Farm building

“ A lawn leading up to a house, even though not beautiful or well kept, adds dignity and character to a place out of all proportion to its waste or expense. I know of nothing that would add so much to the beautification of the country-side as a building line prohibiting houses and barns within a hundred yards of a public road. A staring, glaring farm-house, flanked by a red barn and a pigsty, all crowding the public road as hard as the path-master will permit, is incongruous and unsightly. With all outdoors to choose from, why ape the crowded city streets? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under the present circumstances of agriculture, however, no land will support that outlay on buildings. At the same time, improved buildings and increased building accommodation is on numerous farms urgently needed. The solution of the difficulty therefore seems to lie in a more economical arrangement of the buildings, and in the discovery of cheaper material and methods of construction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most conspicuous part of the garden should show its shrubbery and its flowers. The side or rear approach should be separated from the lawn, and show its constant business occupation, and openly lead off to where men and farm stock meet on common ground, devoted to every purpose which the farm requires. Such arrangement would be complete in all its parts, satisfactory, and lasting. Tinsel ornament, or gewgaw decoration should never be permitted on any building where the sober enjoyment of agricultural life is designed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 brick masons were laying the foundation for an addition to the building, which will give better facilities for work. The fine stock on the farm, the new and improved farming tools, the steam engine in operation, and neat barns, attracted many visitors. ”

“ Our present object is, not to propose any distinct building for pigeon accommodation; but to give them a location in other buildings, where they will be conveniently provided with room, and least annoying by their presence—for, be it known, they are oft-times a most serious annoyance to many crops of the farm, when kept in any considerable numbers, as well as in the waste and havoc they make in the stores of the barns and granaries. ”

“ On a farm it is not necessary to employ any skilled labour, as the doors and windows can be purchased ready-made, and the frame-work, clamps, etc., put together by the farmer himself. For a roof of thatch all the necessary material, except iron ridging, if this is used, can as a rule be procured on the farm.
“Should a cement concrete floor, which is cheaper than a wood one, be desired, there would be an extra expenditure for cement, the amount required being about two bags per twelve square yards. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are many things about this farm house which are commendable, and the only wonder is that so few mistakes were made in planning it. Farmers’ wives must have a sort of natural intuition; how else can the fewness of their mistakes be explained, for they have seldom received the slightest instruction along the lines of house-building. True, the tower on the corner is expensive and inappropriate, but if the house had an appropriate setting of trees and shrubs it might be beautiful. ”

“ It is not our design to give an extended view of rural architecture. But this work can not be complete without a brief notice of farm-buildings, and a few plans for such buildings, adapted to the wants of those possessing limited means. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are rarely destitute of good cellars, which the nature of the climate renders almost indispensable. The farm-buildings consist of a barn, proportioned to the size of the farm, with stalls for horses and cows on each side, and a threshing-floor in the middle, and the more wealthy farmers add a cellar under the barn, a part of which receives the manure from the stalls, and another part serves as a store-room for roots, &c. ”

“ Fig. 13. A house of seven gables.
Few persons are original; therefore, if the little conveniences which help to lighten work and make life more pleasurable are to find a place in the house, they must be seen in other houses. All men have more ideas than any one man; therefore, the range of study should be wide, that whatever is suitable to the conditions may be adopted. After having built many farm houses and barns, and having made a long and most careful study of them, I estimate that from 30 to 40 per cent of the cost of farm buildings is useless, and sometimes worse than thrown away. ”

“ The requirements as to farm buildings are also very different to-day from what they were only a few years ago. These new requirements have arisen from improvements in farm machinery and in preparing food for stock, from altered systems of husbandry, and the larger numbers of stock fed ”

“ The improvements may be too extended for the needs of the purchaser. Some farms are overloaded with buildings (Fig. 4) ; some have badly arranged, unsightly buildings, too good to destroy and too ugly and unhandy for either economy or pleasure. Farm buildings are not a direct source of income and are expensive to keep in repair; therefore, there would better be a slight deficiency of them than an ill arranged surplus. All other permanent improvements, such as orchards, plantations, fences, and the like, should be carefully considered. ”

“ It is fitting that the farm buildings should be well constructed, that you should have ample oil cellars and wine vats, and a good supply of casks, so that you can wait for high prices, something which will redound to your honour, your profit and your self-respect. ”

“ There is a very great diversity in plans of barns and stables, the taste of individual owners seeming to favor this or that plan, which they think is best adapted to their needs. Observation of various types of farm buildings, however, will convince the thoughtful man that too often a single point of convenience is magnified till other points are wholly obscured, and to secure the one advantage several decided conveniences are sacrificed ”

“ On the north side of the line, opposite the ice-house, the dairy-house; then a square with a small power-house for its centre, a woodhouse, a horse barn for the farm horses, a granary and a forage barn for its four corners. Beyond this square to the west was the fruit-house and the tool-house—the latter large enough to house all the farm machinery we should ever need. I have a horror of the economy that leaves good tools to sky and clouds without protection. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The houses which are to be built in the future should be planned with a view to greater economy, convenience, beauty, and durability. There is now little excuse for erecting poor, uncomfortable, inconvenient houses on the farm. True, the rural population is handicapped, for few city architects have made any study of the plain rural house, and fewer have paid any attention whatever to farm barn construction. ”

“ At the threshold—not of the house, but of this treatise—it may be well to remark that it is not here assumed that there has been neither skill, ingenuity, nor occasional good taste exhibited, for many generations back, in the United States, in the construction of farm and country houses. On the contrary, there are found in the older states many farm and country houses 20 that are almost models, in their way, for convenience in the main purposes required of structures of their kind, and such as can hardly be altered for the better. ”

“ Those massive oak sills and posts and poplar swing-beams have for me a meaning and charm which is lacking in the light plank and balloon frame constructed of knotty, wind-shaken hemlock or some other [299] cheap wood. It needs no argument to prove that the numerous detached rural buildings so often seen on the farm should be remodeled; but how? To illustrate, let the buildings shown in Fig. 114, which is from a photograph, be taken. Move the four largest buildings to some suitable site without taking the frames down, and out of the timbers of the other structures build a basement story. ”

“ The farm barn, next to the farm house, is the most important structure of the farm itself, in the Northern and Middle States; and even at the south and southwest, where less used, they are of more importance in the economy of farm management than is generally supposed. Indeed, to our own eyes, a farm, or a plantation appears incomplete, without a good barn accommodation, as much as without good household appointments—and without them, no agricultural establishment can be complete in all its proper economy. ”

“ Thus, a house and out-buildings flanked with orchards, or a wood, on which they apparently fall back for support, fills the eye at once with not only a beautiful group, in themselves combined, but associate the idea of repose, of comfort, and abundance—indispensable requisites to a perfect farm residence. They also seem to connect the house and out-buildings with the fields beyond, which are of necessity naked of trees, and gradually spread the view abroad over the farm until it mingles with, or is lost in the general landscape. ”

“ It was a farm, let there be no mistake, and not merely a homestead.
There were abundant signs of prosperity in the trim, well-groomed appearance of the place. The unmistakable hall-mark was to be found in the presence of a steam-thresher, buried beneath a covering of tarpaulin and snow, in the array of farming machinery, and in the maze of pastures enclosed by top-railed, barbed-wire fencing. All these things, and the extent of the buildings, told of years of ceaseless industry and thrift, of able management and a proper pride in the vocation of its owner. ”