AMEBIOAN AQRICULTURIST. 
215 
1866.] 
KEAB elevation OF BARN. 
Improving Old Barns. 
Our readers have been presented of late with 
several excellent plans for rather expensive new 
barns. In connection with these, the principles 
which should be kept in view in building, or in¬ 
deed in usiug barns and stables, have been dis¬ 
cussed. No doubt many of the readers of the 
Agriculturist have given these plans far less 
study than they would have done had they been 
cheaper and simpler. 
We fear they forget that 
a principle is the same, 
whether fully carried 
out or not, whether ap¬ 
plied on a very humble, 
or on a grand scale. No 
one of the large plans 
may be such as any of 
our readers would like 
to build after, yet each 
contains hints which 
will be of great value to 
any one who proposes to 
build even a very hum¬ 
ble structure of the kind. 
The 30X40-foot barn is an “institution” 
known from one end of the country to the other, 
almost—certainly throughout the older North¬ 
ern States. They are unsightly, inconvenient, 
' and poorly adapted to auy use but that of stor¬ 
ing hay and straw. A barn of this size may be 
^ constructed so as to be very convenient for a 
' small farm—but those of the usual style, with a 
* wide bay, a narrow barn-fioor, and a still nar¬ 
rower row of stables, are poor, inconvenient 
, barns. “ F. W. L.,” 
of Monroe Co., N. 
jY., sends us the 
drawings and de¬ 
scriptions of a way 
in which he cheaply 
converted an old 
barn of this descrip¬ 
tion into a convenient 
and excellent one. 
Messrs. Editors, 
—We see in all parts 
of the country the 
old-fashioned 30x40- 
foot barn, built years 
ago, with a hay mow 
at one' end, stables 
and granary with loft over them, at the.other, 
and barn floor between. Such a barn is almost 
no bam at all, and having such a one in tolera¬ 
ble repair, I set myself to improve upon it with¬ 
out going into great expense. With a couple of 
Jack screws we raised it up eight feet from the 
ground, underpinned it with a good wall, and 
added 20 feet to the length at the end used for 
stabling, mailing the basement of the building 
30 X 60. We also built a cross wall at the edge 
of the hay bay, and covered it with matched 
boarding. We laid a matched floor over the 
entire basement, except the hay bay, which goes 
to the ground, and graded a wagon way up to 
the great doors. In the basement we made a 
passage way 5 feet wide, lengthwise eleven feet 
from the front wall, extending from the east end 
to the hay mow. The space on one side of the 
passage for 30 feet is boarded up to the ceiling 
with matched boarding, and is used for a root 
cellar; this leaves room for a box stall at the 
end. At the other side of the passage we have 
our stables for cattle and horses, with stairs de¬ 
scending into the passage. This is a very sim¬ 
ple improvement upon an old barn, and may be 
PLAN OP BASEMENT. 
varied according to circumstances. I have found 
mine very convenient and comfortable, and not 
too expensive for an ordinary farmer. Many 
farmers think they can not build a basement on 
level ground; mine is level, and I found no diffi¬ 
culty in getting into it with any load that my 
team can draw on my farm. I send a rough 
diagram which perhaps you can make use of. 
■ m t > » 
Walks and Talks on the Farm, 
No. 30. 
This is a great storm, but I do not think it 
will do any harm. We have had charming 
weather and the ground is quite warm. A 
heavy snow like this looks rather hard, but on 
land that is dry and warm, plants will stand 
considerable cold weather. I have five acres of 
barley that was sown on the 12th of April. It 
is now (April 24th) just out of the ground, and 
the Squire “ hopes I shall not lose it,” as he did 
an early-sovm field some years ago. I have no 
fears. If the ground was wet and cold, the 
snow would probably injure it. An old travel¬ 
ler says, if you will only keep your feet and legs 
warm, you can stand any amount of cold. It 
is so to a certain extent with plants. If the 
ground is warm, the sap in the plants is warm 
also. In warm weather the pores of the leaves 
open, and the evaporation of moisture from the 
leaves proceeds rapidly, but when we have a 
sudden cold these pores close Up almost entirely, 
and the warm sap in the plants does not escape. 
The heat is retained. Even tender plants, such 
as geraniums, if sheltered from the winds and 
having good “ bottom heat,” will stand two or 
three degrees of frost. 
In this climate, which is so changeable in the 
spring, we should direct our attention to mak¬ 
ing the ground as warm as possible. I do not 
thinli we can afford to heat bricks and bury 
them in the soil, in order to warm the land, as 
was proposed some years ago, but we can drain ! 
off all the siu’plus water and stir the soil to let 
in the air and sunshine, and in this way we can 
gain two, three, or even five degrees of heat. 
In six hours after it commenced to rain, I 
went to the underdrains and found them dis¬ 
charging to their utmost capacity. The drains 
were cut last spring, and though they carried 
off a great deal of water, they did not act as 
quickly as I expected. It took sometime for 
the water to soak through the soil and reaeh the 
tiles. But now the ground is very porous. The 
drying effect of the drains has extended to a 
greater distance. Little fissures have been 
formed all through the soil, and the rain perco¬ 
lates through them very rapidly and passes into 
the drain. Old ditehers tell me that this is al¬ 
most always so—that you get more benefit from 
underdrains the seeond year and afterwards, 
than you do the first season. At all events 
these drains are now running full, and it is 
“fun”-to see the water come spouting out of 
the main drain five inches in diameter. They 
say I have “ ditching on the brain,” but even 
the Squire admits that my big ditch “will pay.” 
By the way, I had a little pride in sowing this 
five acres of barley so early. When I came here 
it was _the wettest land on the farm. I cut a 
main cTitch five feet deep, and have eight under¬ 
drains running into it. This is now the driest 
and mellowest land I have, and if I do not get 
a good crop of barley, I shall be mistaken. 
The experiments of De Candolle, alluded to 
in the Agriculturist for April, in regard to the 
temperature of the soil at which plants germi¬ 
nate, should be repeated in this country. Wo 
do not pay sufficient attention to the tempera¬ 
ture of the soil. We keep a record of the 
weather, but overlook the soil. If meteorologi¬ 
cal observers in different parts of the country 
