234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



not called for, but the same care as to insulation is observed. 

 Again, most cold-storage rooms, like market refrigerators, 

 have the ice room above the storage room, the weight of the 

 cold air sending it down and around the storing room. 



My own experience wdth cold-storage covers a period of 

 three years, and this feature of my farm operations has been 

 a o^ratifying success, paying handsomely on the investments 

 of money, time and labor. My cold-storage room occupies 

 a portion of the cellar of my hay barn. It is 30 feet long, 

 20 feet wide and 9 feet high. The insulation is secured by 

 lining the entire room with dry sawdust, 12 inches thick. 

 The floor is cement, with gutter or drain around the sides. 

 The ceiling is sheathed, and on this is laid G inches of saw- 

 dust. The circulating space around the body of ice is 4 

 inches. The ice room is overhead, and is 12 feet wide by 

 30 feet long, and has a capacitj^ of 20 tons of ice at a time. 

 It requires tilling twice a year, the first time when harvesting 

 my general crop of ice, and again in September. 



My principal use of this cold-storage room has been to 

 keep cabbages in, from the date of harvesting until spring, 

 or until there was a paying market for them. There is 

 scarcely any shrinkage in the weight of cabbages kept in 

 cold-storage, and, besides the increased price I have been 

 enabled to secure by holding them, I have secured also a 

 time for marketing them when work is not so pressing as in 

 the fall months. This past season I stored for a time my 

 early winter apples, and still later my celery, and both to 

 advantage. 



The cost of constructing and maintaining a co-operative 

 cold-storage depot in the average New England farming town 

 or neighborhood would be far less than in a city, and the 

 expense of keeping butter in cold-storage for four or five 

 months w^ould not exceed a cent a pound, instead of the two 

 cents allowed elsewhere in this paper for the cost of cold- 

 storage in a city depot. Oftentimes it is this cent, or two 

 cents, on a pound of butter or poultry, five cents on a barrel 

 of apples or bushel of pears or crate of berries, that deter- 

 mines the profit or loss in a year's farm operations. With 

 cold-storage at their command, the farmers can control the 

 markets to a great extent, whereas now the conditions of the 



