CONSTRUCTION AND ARRANGEMENT or FARM BUILDINGS. 207 



which they cannot well do unless they scale the gate from the outside 

 and force an entrance. 



Q. What do you consider the best method of constructing and 

 arranging farm buildings? 



A. That is an extensive subject and admits of a great many con- 

 siderations. Different kinds of stock require different accom- 

 modations, and the management of the farm calls for a large variety 

 of buildings suitable to the particular needs of it. On grain farms a 

 barn is required of great capacity to store the grain, and having a 

 capacious floor for threshing and cleaning it. This method of 

 farming, however, can scarcely be followed any more in the Eastern 

 part of the country, because the cheap grain of the far West and the low 

 freights have made it unprofitable ; and with the system of agri- 

 culture of course the special kind of buildings must go. Live stock 

 feeding, dairying and sheep rearing must be followed in the East, and 

 in parts of the West, swine feeding, with corn growing; and each 

 of these special branches of farming calls for different kinds of 

 buildings. As to the construction of the buildings, I approve of cheap 

 wooden structures, easily built and easily renewed. A barn or stable 

 is necessarily always filled with combustible material, and a stone 

 and iron barn built at great cost could not be made fire-proof and 

 would be ruined, although it might not be consumed, if the interior 

 was burned out, so that as far as regards danger from fire, a cheap 

 wooden building is equally as safe as a more costly stone one ; and 

 the cheaper one can be renewed ten times for the cost of the more 

 expensive one. I have built cattle sheds which were comfortable 

 and convenient, something in the style of my present buildings, 

 which cost less than $10 for each head of cattle in them. 



These plain- and yet substantial buildings are much safer from fire 

 than a large structure in which hay and fodder are stored over the 

 cattle, and in which valuable animals worth, perhaps, $50,000 are kept 

 fastened in such a way, that if the barn takes fire they cannot pos- 

 sibly be saved. It is only recently that a fine herd of Jersey cattle 

 were thus burned in a large and costly barn, from which it was im- 

 possible to get them out because of the smoke. The barn cost 

 several thousand dollars, and I know of other barns that have cost 

 more than twenty-five thousand and some much more than that, but 

 which are not so convenient as sheds costing only $10 per head, and 

 which are perfectly comfortable, and from which, in case of fire, 

 every animal could be let loose and driven out with complete safety. 

 The annexed drawings show how these sheds are constructed. 

 The first gives the outside end view, the second a section showing 

 the interior arrangement of the stall, and the third the ground plan 



