254 Our Farming. 



cow and two horses have it, making temporary box-stalls by 

 swinging gates around. I do not particularly recommend my 

 barn. It would suit few; but is exactly right for our business. 

 E is a granary or cellar. It is built of hollow bricks ; is entirely 

 rat proof and very handy. When we thresh, one man can empty 

 grain down trap door from threshing floor above. Or if arrange- 

 ments were made to pay threshers by weight when grain was sold, 

 it could run right down itself. With granaries outside, farmers 

 have to have three or four men to bag grain and move it. But 

 we sell our wheat soon. I do not think it would keep as well in 

 this room as in a building outside. After the wheat is sold, pota- 

 toes are stored in this room (E), which is thirteen feet by thirty. 

 We can put about 2000 bushels of potatoes in H and E in a hurry, 

 when digging, and then the covered yard makes a fine place to 

 take them out in as sacked and load, weigh, etc. Failing to sell 

 our wheat in time and wanting to use E for potatoes, we have 

 bagged the grain and stacked a car load out in covered yard on 

 planks, wheeling it out, as it is level right around. Notice 

 double doors at each end of H . We can drive through with a 

 team to get grain or potatoes from E. D and F are the bays for hay 

 and grain. They come down to basement floor. F is seventeen 

 feet wide, D is thirteen. We have room enough, but are sorry we 

 did not make barn four feet longer and make D also seventeen feet 

 wide. With this exception we would build the same again. 



When we drive in on barn floor above E, it is fourteen feet 

 from the hay rack to bottom of bays. The basement story is ten 

 feet high, or a little over nine in the clear. We can tumble 

 twenty or thirty loads of hay into these bays very quickly. Thirty 

 loads are about what we use. The rest goes back to the land 

 directly for potatoes. Then we put the wheat on top of hay. 

 We have no horse fork, nor do we need it with this arrangement. 

 It is no trouble to pitch the grain up as high as we need to. With 

 twenty feet of hay in when we begin, the wheat will press it down 

 to ten. We can fill these bays nearly forty feet deep, but thirty 

 usually holds our crops. Few people with low barns have any 

 idea how much can be put in a bay 16x30 feet, say, and 

 forty feet deep. The hay and grain settle and settle, if built up 

 so as not to rest on girts or beams, until a man wonders where in 

 the world it has gone to. But he will find it all there when he 

 comes to get it out. We can put ninety loads of hay and grain 

 into our two bays as built, and large loads too. We have never 

 had this much, but filled one full once to see how much it would 

 take. It takes an extra man to fill clear to the top with grain. 

 If we needed to crowd it we should put in an elevator to draw up 

 the whole load on the rack to top of barn, when it could be readily 

 pitched off. These are now used considerably. I advise, by all 

 means, that you build barns big up and down. The posts of 

 our main barn are twenty feet above floor. If building a larger 



