FARMING AND FARM BUILDINGS ESTHETICALLY CONSIDERED.* 



BY GEORGE JAQUES, WOECESTEE, MASS. 



By farming and kindred terms, we and the reader, this present writing, will consent to 

 understand what pertains to the useful, not the amateur cultivation of the earth. A 

 farmer, we will agree to consider as one who relies chiefly or solely upon the products 

 of his farm for his support. An income, derived from other sources, and lavished upon 

 land in the country, does not constitute a man a farmer, at least not in any sense that 

 we intend now to employ the term — no more than the firing (blank cartridges) (with 

 white kid gloves) on Boston Common constitutes "grim-visaged war!" 



The conditions and circumstances, the outgoings and the incomings of the life of 

 the New England farmer, of whom and for whom we write, are of such a nature, that 

 he cannot devote much time to the cultivation, or much money to the gratification of 

 his taste. The short summers and long winters of a rigorous climate, the unproduc- 

 tiveness of a stubborn soil, the high prices of field-labor, militate strongly against a life 

 of elegant leisure. The New England farmer must work too much, to study much ; 

 he must build cheaply, rather than elegantly ; he must take more care for convenient 

 cart-paths, than for gracefully curving drives ; he must interest himself in patches of 

 Com and Potatoes, rather than in ornamental plantations ; his artificial water must 

 relieve the necessities of quadrupeds, whether it pleases the eye of bipeds or not, and 

 so of the rest. 



His esthetic operations should, therefore, hardly extend beyond tlie aim to avoid 

 giving offence. The few hints which follow may afford some idea of what may be 

 accomplished, even within such apparently straightened limits, and without exceeding 

 that rigid economy which, in order to be successful, it seems necessary that a New 

 England farmer should observe. 



The position of the house, &c., is one of the veiy first, and most important consid- 

 erations. The group of buildings, (meaning the house and all subordinate out-buildings, 

 as the bam, the granary, &c.,) should by all means be upon one side of the public 

 high-way. The house may stand anywhere from fifty to three or four hundred feet 

 from the road, according as a good site may be found for it. The frontage should be 

 towards the south or south-east ; or otherwise so that the most important rooms shall 

 look out upon the finest prospect ; but the front of the house should not be governed 

 at all by the lines of the highway upon which it may be erected ; for it is not of the 

 slightest consequence — except in little fifty-by-hundred feet lots — whether the lines of 

 the house and street are "square with one another" or not. The out-buildings should, 

 as much as practicable, be so located, that the house may serve as one of the objects 

 by which they are screened from the street; they should always be as much in the 

 rear of the house as convenience ^\^ll admit of. If the public road is so little traveled 

 that it does not essentially differ from a private drive-way or approach, the buildings 

 may be located quite near to it, perhaps within twenty-five or fifty feet. But, in all 

 other cases, five or six times those distances is near enough for comfort or convenience ; 

 a closer proximity to the street serving no other purpose than to jeopardize the proprie- 

 reputation for good taste. 



* From the Pracii-cal Fanner. 



