VOL. XXX IT. No. ‘25 
WHOLE No. 1351. 
PRICK SIX CENTS 
8a.«5 PER YEAH. 
[Entered according to Act ol Congress, in the year 1875, t>y me Rural PobliBtnnK Company, In tne office of the Lltrnrtaa of Congress at VV'ashington.] 
on the other, with a driveway between. To 
be sure, it is tolerably convenient for feeding 
in to the stock, and the manure 
I ean be thrown out of the sliding 
shutters under the eaves, to be 
washed by every rain. The 
i. covering of this barn is of inch 
boards placed perpendicular, 
whicH soon shrink so much that 
passers-by cau see how much 
hay is within. The hay is 
. reached by climbing up rounds 
in posts that stand straight up 
and down, on which many a 
boy has been terribly afraid, 
_ and up which women and girls 
have climbed hunting after 
eggs, and wondered if they 
could ever return. Iu spring, 
- often early in spring, the hay 
J is gone, and dogs and cals and 
skunks and small boys crawl 
under the sills. Men w ith such 
kind of barns seldom have any 
feed but hay for cattle, and 
no idea that much else can be 
: is true they raise pumpkins, 
which freeze the first, cold snap, and if there 
are turnips, they are kept iu the house cellar 
to poison the family with their putrid steam- 
lug. ■ 
“The most important adjunct to a barn is 
a frost-proof cellar, and it ought to form the 
foundation of the whole structure. If on a 
side hill, which is a good location, a row of 
stables can be made on one side, having a 
partition wall between them and the collar 
proper. Here is the place to store roots of 
all kinds and the surplus vegetables. If a 
farmer is poor he eau build the cellar him¬ 
self, and the difficulties are not. many if it ij 
done after the barn is constructed. Me who 
has not inherited wit enough from past gen¬ 
erations to lay a stone or even a brick wall is 
not likely to make much headway, and if he 
cannot get time during a Course of two or 
three years to haul stone, sand, und provide 
lime, he either has too much land, of which 
he had better sell or give away a part, or he 
spends much of bis time in the village. 
“ Next, hay farming is the poorest farming 
for young stock, working cattle and sheep, 
and sugar beets for cows in milk. Hoot 
forming is the true basis for grain growing, 
because in rotating, small grains giv w after 
roots at a wonderful profit, and the enor¬ 
mous yield of wheat in England is wholly 
due to root culture ; while their line breeds 
of cattle—Short-Home, Devons, and the like 
—and tine sheep had their origiu in this sys¬ 
tem. It may be set down as an axiom that 
there is uo good fanning where root culture 
Is neglected, whether in Europe or America. 
The wheat crop in [franco has incroased 
twenty-fold since sugar beets have come to 
be extensively grown. The course is—more 
roots, more manure ; more manure, more 
roots, and, by consequence, more money. 
When a farmer gets his cellar done, even if 
under a barn only !.'ll feet square, let him 
place therein the product of two acres of 
turnips and beets, costing little more than 
two acres of wheat, and having, as a com¬ 
mencement, from 12 to 15 tons—that is, half 
a crop—he will find out before the winter is 
over how profitable they are, for he can keep 
two fresh cows that will yield 10 to 15 pounds 
ABOUT PIG-PENS AND SMOKE-HOUSES 
It is not fair that a Rural and Agricultural 
Journal, in its talks with readers about farm 
buildings, should forget so important a per¬ 
sonage as the Pig. When the visitor re¬ 
monstrated with the Irish woman for keep¬ 
ing a pig in the shanty, she was completely 
silenced by the query, “An’ sure, ma'am, 
who has a better right to the room them the 
pig r Isn't he the gintleman that pays the 
rint {" Piggy is almost equally important 
to American fanners about these days, when 
heavy taxes are to be paid, when the labor 
and grocery and other bills of tlie year are 
falling due, and when the farmer is selling 
something to get the money for providing 
himself with agricultural and other newspa¬ 
pers throughout the year, and the profits of 
the pig-pen are needed to eke out all defi¬ 
ciencies. The Rural New - Yorker feels 
thick and 7 feet high, with a 
small door on one side, lined 
on the inside with sheet-iron 
or zinc. Hooks should be firmly 
attached to the joists, on which 
to hang the hums and shoul¬ 
ders. This style of smoke - 
house is not very expensive, is 
safe from fire, and when used 
for meat, is an excellent recep¬ 
tacle for ashes, which ought 
never to be kept In contact 
with wood, on account of the 
danger from spontaneous com¬ 
bustion, us they gather damp¬ 
ness with age. Many destruc¬ 
tive fires originate from old ashes from which | they have 
uot a spurk of fire has been seen 
weeks. A stone or brick ash-hoi 
eessity wherever wood is large 
fuel, and while building it; the 
-um'Bdfms 
Ubniv&cMOS 
9 XD 
ISOJl'JOO 
$ X i> 
usoc/mo 
H/OOhl 
dds-ns 
GROUND PLAN. 
HINTS ABOUT BAKN - BUILDING. 
N. C. Meeker writes as follows in The 
New York Tribune. He makes good root 
cellars under barns the basis of good farm¬ 
ing, and we are not sure that he is not right: 
‘The great majority of farmers need en- 
FIG. 4.—A CHEAP SMOKE-HOUSE, 
of butter a week—nearly a dollar a day,— 
while the skim milk will make 150 pounds of 
pork, or, fed to hens, decently sheltered, will 
produce a greater value In eggs. We need 
half a million farmers to have root cellars, 
well filled, and in the course of ten years the 
value of farms will be increased immensely, 
and in a great measure poverty and ignorance 
will disappear.” 
KIO. 3— A BRICK SMOKE - HOUSE 
especially interested in this question, and 
therefore devotes most of this page to illus¬ 
trations of Pig - PcU3 and Smoke - Houses, 
having regard both to the pig's here and 
hereafter—making provision for his comfort 
wnile living, and also making provision of 
him for our comfort while he is dead. 
The large engraving [Fig. 1) represents the 
elevation of a piggery and corn - crib com¬ 
bined, 30x15 feet, with 12-feet posts. It is 
preferable to make the lower part of gtone, 
in which case it may be partially under¬ 
ground if a dry place has been selected. 
The alley through the center of the building 
makes two convenient and sizable rooms, 
one for fattening and the other for store 
pigs. The sleeping, feeding and compost 
rooms [Fig. !i) are each separate, and the 
proprieties of the house will be fully observed 
b . the bogs. Iu the ground plan is a com¬ 
partment for steaming food, with room for 
steamer und barrels to store the product till 
ready for feeding. Above this is a room 
which can be used for butchering, and at 
other times for storing various small farm 
utensils. Hanging doors lor the lower part 
are provided, which cau be opened in fine or 
warm weather. The large bins on either 
side of the alley in the upper portion can be 
used for corn that is to be fed to hogs while 
fattening. 
Two illustrations of smoke - houses are 
PRACTICAL PLANS WANTED 
Readers of the Rural are located iu every 
State and Territory, and of course their need 3 
and ideas vary with climate and other cir¬ 
cumstances. Among them there must be 
many who have new and desirable improve¬ 
ments, not only in dwellings, bub barns, corn- 
houses and other out-buildings, all of which 
would be of interest and use if made known 
beyond their respective localities. This sort 
of gratuitous advertising the Rural believes 
in, and anything new offered pro bono pub¬ 
lico will be given place in its pages, with en¬ 
gravings to make its suggestions intelligible 
and available. Send us such drawings as 
you can make, and the Rural artist will put 
them into shape for presentation to the pub¬ 
lic. The old sayiDg, that “ nobody is as wise 
as everybody,” applies here ; and there is 
scarcely any neighborhood in the country 
where something entirely new has not been 
adopted, the general distribution of which 
would prove a popular convenience. 
