Farmstead

“ A wealthy farmstead is indeed one that has cattle upon many hills, or that sends many carloads of milk to the city; but it can scarcely be called a wholly prosperous farmstead unless it has an unrestricted [Pg 17] view of the scenery from its living-room windows, a public reading room within reach of its buggy's wheels—that means, say, within twelve or fifteen miles at most—or of its automobile—which may mean within forty or one hundred miles according to the roads and the car ”

“ So when we say "farmstead" we mean not only fodder for beasts but also food for the human beings; but inasmuch as the human being is soul-endowed and has imperative appetites in the æsthetic and spiritual realm as well as in the physical, the farmstead covers the matter of the piano as well as of the hoe. ”

“ Now the spring has dried up, the water from the deforested hills comes rushing to the lowlands until the streams overflow their banks, and these and other changed conditions indicate that the future farmsteads should be erected on higher land, on the slopes of the hills. From the one extreme we have gone, in some cases, to the other, and the home has been built on the very apex of some lofty hill. ”

“ The farmstead should occupy the highest end of the strip. For a twenty-five acre or one-man poultry farm these strips should be about forty rods in width. The object of this survey is to permit the water being run by gravity to the entire farm. ”

“ One, two, three farmsteads we passed, each with its white house hidden in trees, its big red barns, its low hog-houses, its feed yards, with their racks polished by the soft necks of feasting steers. And everywhere was the corn—the golden corn of last year in huge cribs like barracks; the emerald hosts of the new crop in its ranks like green-suited lines-of-battle arrested in full career and held as by some spell, leaning onward in act of marching, every quivering sword pointing mysteriously forward. ”

“ In favoured nooks, sheltered from the winds and brought by the painful unremitting labour of years to a condition not altogether prohibitive of cultivation, farmsteads stand, with their surrounding barns and cow-sheds, the whole comprised within walls constructed of flints picked plentifully from the land. ”

“ A farmstead, with ugly blue-slated roof, which has appeared on the ridge of the down of late years, and possibly a road which did not exist in days of old: these alone have changed the aspect of the vast solitude in which the hoary monument stands. No hedges, no gates, never a sheep upon the meagre grass. As Ingoldsby says of Salisbury Plain, in general:—
Not a shrub, nor a tree, nor a bush can you see ”

“ The nearest farmsteads are built high among the sunny dingles overlooking the glen, and the corn and the root-crops are grown on the slope beyond the broad belts of gorse and bramble.
In winter, the low-lying lands are seldom visited by the peasantry, except when the dairymaid drives the cattle to and fro, or the hedger trims the undergrowth along the ditches. ”

“ If it is admitted that the farm unit is limited because of the physical difficulties of managing large areas, then it must at once be seen how important the arrangement of the farmsteading must be to the successful conduct of the farm. In the older farming communities where the present farm holdings are the result of several purchases or sales the shape of the farm, the arrangement 86 of the fields and the place of the farm buildings become an extremely important matter. ”

“ It certainly will be necessary to cultivate several times that part of the garden which is used for late-growing crops, such as cabbage and celery. As a rule, the farmer cannot afford to attempt to raise two crops on the same land the same year, since labor is everything and the use of land nothing; therefore, better prepare the ground by two or three plowings for the late crops, than to attempt to raise them on land which has parted with much of its readily available plant-food in producing the early crop. ”

“ There should be room between the house and barn for a score or more of large trees, which may serve, in part, to screen each building from the other in case of fire, to shade the walk between the two buildings, and, in part, the barn itself. No tree is better adapted for this purpose than the white elm. The open barnyard should, wherever possible, be discarded, for it tends to increase the wasting of manures and the cost of getting them to the field; to the multiplication of fences and flies, and to unnecessary exposure of animals. ”

“ It is easily seen why our ancestors in the wooded districts fenced the farm into small fields. In some cases the surface stones were so numerous on the land that the larger ones had to be removed to make way for the plow. Naturally they were used for constructing fences, for the most economical way to get rid of these too numerous stones was to make fences of them. The haul was short and the fences could be increased in width and height until storage room was provided for all the rocks which the farmer cared to remove. So here, too, the temptation was great to fence the farm into small fields. ”

“ Naturally, the questions arise, are these large structures necessary, and what changes in agriculture have taken place to create a need for such mammoth structures? They are necessarily expensive, and too often dwarf and belittle the house when placed near it.
Modern advanced farmers secure nearly or quite double the average yield of crops of their grandfathers. This is an indisputable fact, notwithstanding the hue and cry about the decadence of the rural population. The facts are that some are farming much better than the older generations and some much worse. ”

“ A casual observation will make it self-evident that the structures on farms have received little attention as to beauty of form, economy of construction, or adaptation of means to ends. Like many others, I have noted all this and have made a somewhat careful study of the causes which usually have produced this want of harmony, durability, adaptability and economy in the construction of rural homesteads. ”

“ If not drained, will it bring constant disappointment? Fences, lanes and the necessity for them, the amount and location of inferior land as pasture land, the kind of weeds about the farm, as [61] well as the amount, kind and location of timber, should be considered.
Fig. 4. Too many buildings for eighty acres of land.
Land devoted to market-gardening should be near the market town where the perishable products are to be sold. Vegetables should reach the market early in their season in a fresh and presentable condition and cheaply, if satisfactory profits are desired. ”

“ Grain, hay and stover are all unloaded most economically by means of slings and hay fork, operated by horse-power, but the unloading by horse-power implies high barns, with mows measurably unobstructed by timbers. Economy of space also implies deep mows, since a mow twenty feet deep holds more than two mows ten feet deep. ”

“ The farm-house, the spacious farm-yard and group of irregular, shadowy, thatched buildings, and the surrounding rookery elms, all on a gently-sloping ground next to the road—this is the finest modern thing on the Plain. The farm itself is but a small, slated house, gray-white in colour, with a porch and five front windows, half hid among elm trees; but the whole group probably resembles a Saxon chief’s homestead. The trees make a nearly continuous copse with the elms and ashes that stand around and above the thatched cart lodges and combined sheds and cottages at Joan-a-Gore’s Cross. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Plow the turf off of any scurvy lot or road-side, and pile it into the barn-yard; nay, dig a hundred loads of pure clay, and place it there, if you can get it at a small expense, and your average soil is gravelly or sandy. The farmer who is unable or reluctant to buy commercial fertilizers should apply his whole force every Autumn to replenishing his barn-yard with that material which he can obtain most easily which the trampling of his cattle may readily convert into manure. A month is too little, two months would not be too much, to devote to this good work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are other and newer clearings beyond the ranges and out of sight, but here all that is visible is very much trimmer and neater in appearance than our farm.
Over three parts of the basin the plough has passed. About one-half is under wheat, maize, and other crops, while the grass on the remainder looks wonderfully rich, freed as it is from stumps, drained, and, to a measurable extent, levelled. Cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs are feeding in the paddocks.
We eye the scene with great admiration, and even envy. This is the sort of thing our farm ought to be, and will be. ”

“ But uncle Nathan's crop of corn was safely housed in the barn, on the very day before the tempest broke over it, and all the harm he suffered, was a little delay in the "husking frolic," which, for many years, had been a sort of annual jubilee at the Homestead, for the young people of the village usually managed, in some indirect way, to help the old man forward in his farm labor, making plowing matches in the spring, mowing parties in the summer, and "husking frolics" in the fall ”

“ The bonanza farms were being broken up. However, many of the great estates remained, five to ten thousand acres in extent, running from the Sacramento bank to the horizon dancing in the heat waves, and studded with great valley oaks.
"It takes rich soil to make trees like those," a ten-acre farmer told them.
They had driven off the road a hundred feet to his tiny barn in order to water Hazel and Hattie. A sturdy young orchard covered most of his ten acres, though a goodly portion was devoted to whitewashed henhouses and wired runways wherein hundreds of chickens were to be seen. ”

“ The old farm had passed into other hands, and little fair-haired children played under the boughs of the orchard, whence many of the old trees had been cleared and young ones planted in their stead.
The lichen-covered roof of the homestead had been repaired, and the appearance of the place bespoke prosperity and comfort.
It was a May evening in 1780 when heavy footsteps were heard coming slowly up the lane at the side of the farm, and a tall athletic man went to the wicket-gate and leaned upon it with folded arms. ”

“ Plant-food, natural cheaper than artificial, 62. Pools in level country, 78. Pools in the South, how constructed, 262. Poultry Houses, 306. Quality in farm products, 32. Red River valley soil, nitrogen in, 37. Remodeling old barns, chap. xviii, 298; combining several old frames, 299; form of roof, 302; trussing to eliminate posts, 301. Remuneration in agriculture [350] , 7. Renter and renting discussed, 40. Road to farm, 63. Road fences, may be discarded, 339. Root cellar, location of in barn, 270. Rosendale cement, proportion to mix, 274. Rural life ”

“ And the wagons, going through, had made a little track that went up past the kitchen door and past the shed and past the barn and past the orchard to the wheat-field. But when this farm-house was just built, there wasn't any wheat-field or any other field, and the places where the fields would be were all covered with trees. And that was a long time before Uncle Solomon had the farm.
So the man that built the farm-house took his axe, one day, when the snow was on the ground, and he went to the place where he wanted the fields and he began to cut down the trees. ”

“ The Flying U ranch hemmed in by homesteaders from the East, he saw; homesteaders who were being urged to bring all the stock they could, and turn it loose upon the shrinking range. Homesteaders who would fence the country into squares, and tear up the grass and sow grain that might never bear a harvest. Homesteaders who would inevitably grow poorer upon the land that would suck their strength and all their little savings and turn them loose finally to forage a living where they might. ”