1879 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
97 
month, cattle-raising in connection with grain-grow¬ 
ing will greatly increase the yield of wheat and 
corn, greatly to the pecuniary advantage of the 
farmer. This course was the means of placing Eng¬ 
lish and French farming so far ahead of ours in pro¬ 
portionate products, and if generally adopted here, 
as the present and prospective demand for cattle 
for exportation permits, it will do as much for Amer¬ 
ican agriculture as it has done for that of Europe. 
Ice Houses and Ice without Houses. 
¥ 
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Fig. 1.— GROUND PLAN. 
A very good illustration of the utility of a free 
interchange of ideas, came to us in the arrival of 
the English mail early in January—delayed by ad¬ 
verse storms. Upon opening the “Gardener’s 
Chronicle,” of date Dec. 28th, we found several de¬ 
signs for ice-houses, ice-wells, aud other contriv¬ 
ances for storing ice employed in England, one or 
two of which we thought might be useful to 
American readers, and made a mental memorandum 
to reproduce them. Turning next to “The Garden,” 
another London journal of the same date, we saw 
that it had found in our account of some ice-houses 
in this country, published in the American Agricul¬ 
turist in November last, sufficient of interest to in¬ 
duce it to copy the article with its engravings (giv¬ 
ing full credit of course), for the benefit of its 
A readers. Here was 
one English journal 
giving its readers 
American notions 
about ice-houses, and 
another English jour¬ 
nal, of the same date, 
giving English no¬ 
tions which we pro¬ 
pose to present to our 
readers. While in the 
large operations of 
cutting and storing 
the ice crop, this 
country is far in ad¬ 
vance of any other, 
the great and con¬ 
stant demand for the 
product, correspond¬ 
ing with the almost 
certain adequate sup¬ 
ply, gives to the ice 
business a permanent 
character in this 
country which it has 
gj* not in England. In 
that country, the 
commercial supply 
comes mainly from Norway. Not every winter 
in England allows a supply of ice to be stored, 
hence the arrangements for collecting and pre¬ 
serving it are of a much less permanent character 
than with us. In many cases in England, the ice 
is stored in ice-wells, which are much after the 
manner of the old style of ice-house in use with us 
30 or 40 years ago—the ice being stored below the 
surface of the ground, a method sometimes follow¬ 
ed now, but only practicable where perfect drain¬ 
age can be secured. Ice-houses above ground are 
coming more into use in England, and some of 
their methods may be adopted by us. Figures 1,2, 
and 3, show au ice-house that may be built with 
very little outlay. Figure 1, gives the ground 
plan; a center-post, o, is set up to extend 15 feet 
above the ground level; around this is seta row of 
posts, 6, 9 feet high and 2 feet apart, to form a 
circle 15 feet in diameter; outside of this row, and 
4 feet distant from it, is set another row of posts, 
c ; these are 5 feet high, and we assume, 2 feet 
apart, although the article does not say so. A door¬ 
way is boarded up at d, and the space between the 
two rows of posts is packed firmly with straw. A 
sectional view of the house is given in fig. 2, and a 
perspective view is shown at fig. 3. This is a very 
unsatisfactory account, as all the description be¬ 
yond what we have given is; “(7 is a view of the 
roof, which is formed of well-prepared wheat or rye 
straw, 4 feet thick”—roofing with straw being so 
common in that country that it probably was not 
thought worth while to give the method of making 
Fig. 3.— COMPLETE HOUSE. 
it. No further details as to drainage, ventilation, 
packing the ice, etc., are supplied, and we only call 
attention to it to show how simple a structure may 
be used to store ice. Still simpler is that shown in 
fig. 4. In England, when they have an unexpect¬ 
edly good crop of ice, the blocks are gathered, 
stacked up in some favorable place, and covered 
with a thick layer of straw. In that cool climate 
such stores of ice frequently last the season 
through, and in this country such a stack might 
often be made to help out the regular supply. Fig¬ 
ure 4 shows one of these temporary store-houses, 
built against a bank. The ice is shown at A. The 
out wall B, is of “fern,” but straw would answer 
equally well, held in place by boards and braces, as 
shown at B. The stack of ice is covered by a little 
straw, then 18 inches of fern, and the thatched 
roof, C, is put over the whole. The article, which 
is exceedingly meagre in details, suggests that “ an 
ice-house of this kind answers perfectly when 
placed on an incline so that the water may naturally 
drain away.” To which we add, if it does not nat¬ 
urally drain away, make it do so artificially. It 
also says: “Shade is desirable but not essential.” 
In this country it is both desirable and essential. 
Our reference to the article is on account of its 
suggestions to those who have made no prepara¬ 
tions for storing ice, and would secure a stock. A 
large body of ice, on a well drained place, covered, 
even in the rudest manner, with a thick layer of 
non-conducting materials—and in this country 
straw, or marsh or “ swale ” hay will answer every 
purpose of the English “fern”—will keep al¬ 
most, if not quite as well as in a more permanent 
structure. It is not too late to put these hints into 
practice, for it has more than once happened that 
our chief ice crop has been gathered in March. 
Setting Fence Posts. 
The heaving of fence posts is caused by the lifting 
of the frozen surface of the ground, which carries the 
post with it, because firmly attached to the earth 
by the frost. When the ground settles after a thaw 
the post remains in its elevated position. In a few 
years the fence is all out of shape. To prevent this, 
the holes may be dug larger than usual, and filled 
in around the posts with stones—the bottom of 
the post being left larger than the upper portion, as 
in fig. 1. Or a hole may be made through the post 
near the bottom, and a piece of wood put through 
it as at fig. 2; or a piece of wood may be nailed to 
the side of the post, as in fig. 3, and the hole filled 
with stones or earth. A very solid and durable 
manner of setting, is to fill around the post with 
lime-mortar and sand, or for an expensive fence,with 
hydraulic cement and sand, making the post holes 
a little larger at the bottom than the top (see fig. 4). 
The cement should be raised about the foot of the 
post so as to shed water and keep the post dry. 
A Home-made Root Cutter. 
A farmer with whom 10 or 12 dollars is a seri¬ 
ous item, will hesitate about expending that 
amount on a root cut¬ 
ter, to save an hour 
or two daily through 
the winter—a season 
when time is plenti¬ 
ful. We recently gave 
an illustration of a 
simple machine for 
slicing roots ; this has 
given rise to inquiries 
for a root pulper 
which will divide the 
roots still finer. A pulper may be made as easily 
as the slicer referred to. All that is required is a 
box with sloping sides, as shown at fig. 3, and 6et 
firmly upon four stout spreading legs, and a proper¬ 
ly fitted roller inside armed with cutters. The roller 
is shown at fig. 1. It is made of a piece of seasoned 
oak or maple logs ; a square headed pin is driven 
into one end to which a grindstoue handle may be 
fitted, and a round wooden or iron pin provided at 
the other end. The teeth may be of iron, l-inch 
square, the cutting end flattened out and sharp¬ 
ened, and the other rounded and screw-threaded, 
Fig. 3.— HOME-MADE ROOT-CUTTER. 
so that they may be screwed into the roller. If 
the roller is 18 inches long, the teeth should be 3 
inches apart, in 6 or 7 rows, and so placed that no 
two of them come in line with each other. They 
project about two inches from the roller, and are 
set into this, sloping a little forwards so as to give 
a forcible cutting motion with the exercise of the 
least power. The front of the box is cut away suf¬ 
ficiently to permit the shreds of the roots to fall 
out and into a basket or box placed to receive 
them. The legs are firmly fastened with carriage 
bolts. The whole cash outlay for this useful ma¬ 
chine need not be more than two dollars, and two 
days’ labor of any man or boy who can handle tools. 
Movable Fences. 
Portable fences may be used extensively upon 
nearly every farm, so as to reduce the cost of 
fencing, and the amount of land that would be oc¬ 
cupied by permanent fences. Cultivated fields 
need no fences; they are only required around pas¬ 
tures and the boundaries of the farm. The pasture 
fences may be all of a temporary character, so that 
they can be moved as the pasture is shifted from 
field to field. Various kinds of portable fences 
have been previously described in the American 
Agriculturist , but new ideas occur and many im¬ 
provements are made through new experience. The 
cheapest kind of fence is the hurdle, made either 
