NEW-YORKER. 
JUNE % 
THE RURAL 
A SIX-HUNDRED-DOLLAR BARN. 
Here is a sketch, Fig. 215, of a barn 
that can be built in this locality for 
about 8*170 in money, not to count any¬ 
thing for excavating, hauling lumber, sand, 
stone, lime, etc,, or quarrying stone, which 
every farmer building here docs unless 
he is well “heeled" financially. The drawing 
shows that there is a difference in the size of 
the posts. 1 make the corner posts, the posts at 
the doors and the purlin posts all 7x7 inches, 
they being the only ones having girder mor¬ 
tises in them. The intermediate posts are 4x7 
inches. I make the mortises in them (for the 
stringing) 2x6 inches, letting the tenon of one 
string lie on top ol' the tenon of the other. I 
bore through and pin all my tenons: by doing 
this I can make as stiff a frame as if I used 
posts 7x7 or 8x8 in place of 4x7. It takes a 
little more work but saves considerable in 
lumber, which is quite an item with us here. 
My braces I run from sill almost to plate. I 
frame them in the sill and posts inside of the 
stringing, and wherever they cross a string I 
drive in a six-inch spike which makes it very- 
firm. I tusk and mortise all braces, hammer 
beams and girders, which gives a bearing the 
full thickness of the piece and does not let all 
the weight or strain be on the tenon. I do not 
brace from end purlin post to purlin plate, for 
the reason that I think it is the weight of the 
roof pressing on the brace placed there that 
spreads the end of so many barns. I use a 
wide girder in the ends to resist any pressure 
of hay or grain. The following is a bill of 
materials, all pine,at $24 per thousand in Pitts¬ 
burgh, Pa,, 12 miles from here. This draft is 
for a 20 foot story. I would advise those 
thinking of erecting bams to build that hight, 
as space skyward is cheap, and in a 20-feet 
story there is considerable room at a small 
outlay; the same roof and foundation, too, 
will answer as for a lower building, and the 
carpenter work is no more than in a 16 or 18 
feet story, I have made no bill of lumber for 
stabling. I have drafted for a nine-foot base¬ 
ment; if this is dispensed with the barn will 
not cost $600, and in some localities materials 
are cheaper than here, so that the bam with 
finished basement will cost less than I have 
estimated. 
BILL OF LUMBER, ETC. 
Ft. in. 
S posts, ?r7, 20 ft lonjf.. —. 653.4 
4 purlin posts, 7x7, 26 ft, long. 424.8 
8 Intermediate posts, 7x4,20 ft. 873.4 
4 purlin posts, 6x6, 7 ft... 84 
4 hammer beams, 8x16,19 ft. 709.3 
8 braces, 3x5,20 ft. 213.4 
2 braces, 7x7,20 ft. 163.4 
4 girders, 7x7, 9*4 ft... 155.2 
2 girders, 6x10, 86 ft. 360 
2 sills, 10x10, 60 ft. 833.4 
2 cross sills, 10x10, 36 ft.600 
2 cross sills, 8X10,86 ft. 480 
1 summer, 7x10, 50 ft. 291.8 
1 side mud sill, 4x12. 50 ft. 260 
2 end mud sills, 4x12, 82 ft. 256 
20 Pieces, 3x1,12 ft. 240 
80 pieces, 8x4, 8 ft. 240 
20 pieces, 8 x 1.16 ft. 320 
2 pieces, 3x6,18 ft... 54 
9 pieces, 3x6,10 ft... 120 
52 rafters, 2x5,22 ft. 953.4 
72 Joists, 2x10,18 ft.2,160 
28 Joists, oat loft, 2x6,9 ft. 252 
14 joist, oat loft, 2x10,19 rt. 443.4 
2 basement posts, SxlU, 9 ft. 120 
13 basement posts, 4x10,9 ft. 390 
2 summer posts, 7x7, 9 ft... 73.6 
10 summer inside posts. 2x7, 9 ft. 105 
4 strain braces, 4x7,10 ft. 86.8 
Total.11,355.4 
4,600 ft., 20 ft. barn boards, 1x12, at 824 per 1,000..$U0.40 
500 ft. 12 ft. barn boards, 1x12 at $24 per 1.000. 12.00 
1,800 ft. 18 ft. barn boards, 1x12 at 824 per 1,000... 36.00 
700 ft. 18 ft. hemlock boards, 1x12, at $16 per 1,000 11.20 
17,500 pine shingles, at 85 per 1,000. 87.50 
351 roofing laths. 34.00 
Hardware, nails, hinges, rollers, etc. 25 00 
Mason work. 80‘00 
Carpenter work. 150.00 
$396.10 
11,355 ft. of frame at 824.272.52 
$668.62 
Allegheny Co., Pa. H. Scott Donnely, 
Fig. 215.—End view of barn at left comer; 
see back wall returned around end four feet. 
Fig. 216 gives side view of bam. 
Fig. 217.—View of frame alongside of floor 
framed open from floor to comb for conveni¬ 
ence in unloading hay with horse hay fork. 
Block shown under middle of sill is summer, 
running full length of bam to support cross 
sills and for joist to lap on. See page 345, 
Fig. 218, cross section of bam. See page 345. 
<L\jt fcvsmt+fyzxi). 
LEAVES FROM PAST EXPERIENCE 
WITH SWINE. 
Making Cheap Pork. 
In a late Rural I spoke of some cheap pork 
I had raised for family use. I was then very 
poor and living in a rented house, owning only 
one cow, but she an extra-good milker. One 
day as I was looking at a litter of pigs owned 
by the mau of whom I rented, he said, point¬ 
ing to a miserable little scrawny runt, “ I’ll 
give you that pig if you will take it.” I said 
“Thauk you, I will,” So I fixed up a light 
pen, got my pig, gave it a good scrubbing in 
soap-suds, and begau feeding it. For a long 
time we kept it on milk. When it would take 
all the milk we had for it we added potato 
parings and dish-water. The last five weeks I 
added the meal of a bushel of corn, costing 50 
cents. When my neighbor butchered I had 
my pig killed, and it gave me 200 pounds of 
the nicest of pork. As the neighbor who 
butchered my pig charged nothing for his 
labor, the pork cost me, aside from the trouble 
slaughtered; but their treatment was very 
different. I had not much old com, but had 
a field of good clover growing up close to 
the pig-pen. So this year, in addition to the 
milk from the daily, the pigs were fed clover 
three times a day from the time it was six or 
eight inches high till com was large enough 
to roast. Then I cut up corn-stalks and fed 
them to the animals three times daily. They 
would eat the stalks as well as the ears till the 
corn was nearly ripe, and I never before had 
pigs fatten so fast. They were slaughtered 
when about eight months old, and weighed 
nearly 306 pounds apiece. Why results so 
different in two lots of pigs of apparently 
equal goodness, neither of which ever set a 
of daily feeding, just one-fourth of a cent per 
pound. Most poor men try to keep so many 
pigs that they generally cost all, if not more 
than all they are worth. I refer to the above 
item of experience simply for the benefit of 
those who are so poor that they have only one 
or two cows. I should add, we kept neither cat 
nor dog—the last the poor man's chosen curse. 
FAILURE WITH PIGS. 
I had a large Utter of nice pigs dropped and 
felt proud of them as I saw them growing 
finely. I had a large supply of old corn, nnd 
so determined in my own mind to make my 
pigs when eight months old weigh 300 pounds 
apiece. I kept them in a peu from the time 
they were dropped till they were slaughtered. 
I was satisfied with their progress till after 
they were weaned. The last two months they 
were fed 1 wab absent from home. When I 
returned it seemed as if my pigs were not so 
good as when I left home. Some of them 
were “crippling down” so that they could 
hardly get to their feed. I closed up that 
experiment at once in disgust. Where was 
the trouble? “Too close confinement,” do you 
foot on the ground? I think the difference 
was wholly due to the different manner of 
feeding. Subsequent experience strengthens 
this conviction. 
Here is one thing that I have fully learned— 
the more closely pigs are confined, the more 
succulent food they must have. Another 
thing I have learned is—if you must depend 
mainly on old corn for young pigs, you must 
give them free range. Confinement in such 
cases is the next thing to knocking them on 
the head. Another thing I have learned is— 
the rnan who has plenty of pigs and plenty of 
old com will make the most pork, and, of 
course, the most money, by selling a part of 
bis corn and putting the money into bran. 
whether he is obliged to keep his pigs confined 
or not. Theron Loomis. 
fUricitllitral. 
RAYS. 
Don’t be in a hurry to get your window or 
hot-house plants set out; there is nothing 
Side View of Barn.—Fig. 216. 
say? I think not. This I will show by an¬ 
other leaf in my experience in fattening pigs. 
The cause of the failure was the feeding of 
too much old corn when the hogs were closely 
confined, and an almost entire absence of 
coarse food, as clover, corn-stalks and roots. 
success with pigs. 
Another year I fattened a large litter of 
pigs, keeping them in the same place from 
the day they were dropped till they were 
gained by plnnting out tropical plants in a 
cold soil—the last week in May or the finst 
week in June is soon enough. “ Harden off” 
your plants well before you set them out. Na¬ 
ture cannot trust the leaves of the Ash, the 
Catalpu, the Kentucky Coffee Tree, or the 
White Fringe Tree, which uro ail hardy 
trees, to the mercy of cold Bpring weather, 
then how can we, consistently, set out our 
Coleuses and Aehyrantheses, Geraniums 
and Heliotropes, which are tropical plants, 
sooner than the hardy trees assume their 
leaves? 
* * 
Among some fifty kinds of House-leeks that 
we grow and which we treat as hardy plants, 
I find that the one called Calcnreum (in florists’ 
catalogues, but erroneously, it is named Cali- 
fomieum) is the only sort that has been much 
winter-hurt. I never before knew it to be in¬ 
jured. It is a native of the South of France, 
and is the species most used by gardeners in 
their mosaic and succulent flower beds. 
4= * 
• 
The Spring Adonis is the best and brightest 
Spring-blooming plant in our gardens. Its 
blossoms are large, showy and many. The 
plant is neat, very hardy, of the easiest culti¬ 
vation and a long-lived perennial. A little later 
but next in point of showiness among hardy 
yellow' flow-ers is the Caucasian Leopard’s- 
bane (Doronienm.) It grows about 15 inches 
high, has large, bright, marigold-like flowers, 
is of easy grow th, hardy, perennial and may 
be multiplied to any number by division. 
$ * 
Of the several varieties of Cactuses that are 
said to be hardy and which we have tried, I 
find that Opuntia Missourieusis is the only one 
that has survived the past Winter w-ith im¬ 
punity. But very few Cactuses are absolutely 
hardy in the Northern States. 
* 4c 
The Siberian Squill is the best and bright¬ 
est blue-flowered plant in the Spring garden. 
It grows easily and strengthens year by year 
and it multiplies exceedingly by self-sown 
seedlings. From Haarlem, Holland 1 had a 
consignment, last Fall of Seilla Sibirica, S. 
arntena, S. bifolia, and S. prsecox, and now 
that they are in bloom they are all the same 
thing, namely, S. Sibirica. But the true S. 
bifolia is a very different plant, a lovely little 
Spring flow’er, not so bright as the Siberian 
Squill. 
* 4c 
The Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa Lu- 
eilia) a ueat, little, blue-flowered, bulbous 
plant from the mountains of Asia Minor and 
of recent introduction to cultivation, is un¬ 
worthy of the avalanche of praise bestowed 
upon it—in beauty, in a garden sense, it cannot 
approach a Siberian Squill. It is hardy, about 
six inches high, has one or more sky-blue 
white-centred star flowers on a scape, and it 
blossoms when the Crocuses do. 
4> 4c 
In Tulips the Due Van Thol and Tournesols 
are among the brightest and best, and cheap¬ 
est for out-door planting. Among Daffodils 
the old-fashioned double and single Daffodils, 
and the variety known as Van Sion arc showy 
and hardy. The Poet’s Narcissus too is hardy, 
copious and permanent. Most of the other 
Narcissus wear out or die out in a year or 
two. Leon. 
f arm Cccmomi). 
THOROUGH DRAINAGE. 
When and Where Will it Pay. 
SEC. W. I. CHAMBERLAIN. 
I do not claim or believe that thorough 
drainage will pay on all soils or uuder all cir¬ 
cumstances. 1 think the dictum of Horace 
Greeley aud others that “all hinds that will 
pay to farm w ill pay to tile-drain” is false, 
and does real harm to the interests of drain¬ 
age. Sandy loams and gravelly sub-soils give 
natural d raiuage aud do not need tile drainage 
or artificial drainage of any kind. Probably 
one-quarter of the laud of Ohio is of this kind. 
Natural Blue-Grass pasture lands to be kept in 
permanent pasture, will not pay for tile drain¬ 
age in Ohio yet, if ever, except it be the low and 
swampy portions Of the “drift soils” of 
Ohio, and most other States east of here, the 
Elm, Beach and Hickory soils need drainage; 
most of the Chestnut and Butternut soils do 
uot. All soils that will remain soaked or sat¬ 
urated for days or hours after a heavy raiu is 
over, need tiledrainugo to fit them for culti¬ 
vation, for fruit, grain, and a rotation of crops, 
though it may not pay if the laud is at any 
rate to be left in permanent pasture or mea¬ 
dow. Even the fact that some of these lands 
are considerably rolliug does uot prevent the 
need of tile drainage. Indeed it may even 
increase the need of it by increasing the 
amount und rapidity of surface wash anil 
gulleying, and the consequent und inevitably 
heavy lass of fertility, especially of manures 
ami fertilizers applied recently and near the 
surface. 
Now it will not pay where land is worth 
from $60 to $100 per acre, to keep whale farms 
in permanent pasture and meadow, except, 
perhaps, for the breeding of “thorough-bred’ 
or pure-bred animals to lie sold at high or fancy 
