* A CONVENIENT BARN. 273 



mered them mostly on pasture, and in nine months from the 

 time they were bought, sold them for twenty dollars a head — 

 nineteen hundred per cent, in nine months. 



The writer, now fifty-seven years of age, makes no pre- 

 tensions of being a model farmer, though some have said that 

 he is one of the successful farmers of Illinois. Be that as it 

 may, he began at the beginning, and whatever of success 

 may have attended his efforts, is due more to a steady and 

 determined effort to win, than to any other one cause. 



Reared amid the pine-clad mountains of western New 

 York, where they often stone up the lower side of potato 

 hills to get dirt enough for the potatoes, and bring the Winter's 

 wood down the mountain side on a hand-sled, (and no school 

 house within miles), he knows what poverty is, and has a 

 fellow feeling for all who live by labor. 



A. P. CHARLES, 



KNOXVILLE, KNOX COUNTY. 



A Convenient Barn. 



My barn, which I think is a very good one, is made as 

 follows: Outside posts sixteen feet; forty-eight feet from 

 ground to comb of roof. Forty-eight feet by ninety-six in 

 size, on stone piers three feet at base sloping to the top on 

 both sides to eighteen inches, with basement eight feet in front 

 and seven and one-half feet in the rear. The front center pier 

 is eight feet in width, the others, four in number, are six feet 

 wide. Doors in front are swung up and fastened to joists^ 

 which are easily dropped in bad weather. The east half of the 

 barn is stalled for feeding cattle. The width of the stalls is two 

 feet ten inches with feed trough and hay rack. The hay is 

 throw into the rack from above. The corn crib is below so 

 arranged with derrick as to save a great deal of labor in unload- 

 ing. I have stalls for thirty head of cattle. Each stall has a 



