1902 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
6o7 
HOW TO BUILD A FROST PROOF HOUSE. 
I wish to build a frost-proof house in which to 
store apples, vegetables and canned fruit. I know a great 
many farmers need just such a house. I have a fairly 
good cellar, but it is too warm until about November 15, 
therefore I wish to build a house above ground. One of 
my neighbors has such a house, which he built several 
years ago. He used eight-inch studding and crammed 
the walls with sawdust, but his house is not giving satis¬ 
faction now; he claims the trouble is because he had to 
use old wet sawdust. Another man in my vicinity has 
a similar house only he used 12-inch studding. His house 
is giving satisfaction, but has been used only a year or 
so. I have two plans in view which 1 will outline briefly, 
and will ask you and any of your readers who have had 
experience for advice as to which you consider the best 
plan, and also for any improvement on said plans. The 
first plan is to put up a two-story building 12x20 feet, 
using 12-inch studding and cram the walls with new saw¬ 
dust, having it dry if possible. I will use only the lower 
story for a storage room, but will have it so arranged 
in the upper story that by raising a plank in the floor 
more sawdust could be added if there were any shrink¬ 
age. The other plan is to erect a building of the same 
dimensions using 2x4 studding 18 inches apart, weather¬ 
boarding the outside of the studding and on the inside 
of this studding ceiling with heavy sheathing paper 36 
inches wide, which -would make the laps come on the 
studding; then nail a strip two inches wide and one inch 
thick on each studding; ceil with paper again and strip 
as before, and so on until I had ceiled with paper eight 
times, and then ceil with %-inch plank, which would 
give me about a 14-inch wall, containing one four-inch 
and eight one-inch dead-air spaces. Will a building 
according to the second plan be frost-proof in south¬ 
western Virginia where the thermometer sometimes falls 
to 10 or 12 degrees below zero and perhaps continues at 
zero weather for a week? Would four two-inch dead- 
air spaces be as good as eight one-inch spaces? Will it 
be necessary to cut the dead-air spaces in two horizon¬ 
tally with a strip of wood if the lower story is only 
eight feet high, and the spaces are made air-tight at top 
and bottom? Will it be necessary to have the ceiling as 
thick as the walls? h. j. w. 
Virginia. 
The first plan is by far the best anti cheapest. 1 
would recommend, however, that instead of using 
sawdust, which it is almost impossible to get in a dry 
condition, he should use planing mill shavings, which 
are almost invariably dry, and are very nearly as good 
as dry sawdust for insulating purposes. I believe 
them to be fully as good as the ordinary green saw¬ 
dust, although I have no tests and cannot say posi¬ 
tively. In using mill shavings for insulation they 
should be rammed tightly into the wall, and if they 
are reasonably dry and protected from moisture on 
both sides by the best grades of insulating paper, they 
will never settle in the wall as will sawdust, espe¬ 
cially green sawdust. One of the prime requisites of 
insulation is its protection from a circulation of air, 
which, if allowed to penetrate the insulation, will 
carry with it moisture which will be deposited on the 
cold side of the wall, causing dampness and mildew. 
In regard to the second plan, the use of air spaces 
has by the best cold storage architects and engineers 
been almost entirely discontinued, as they have been 
proven by actual test to be of comparatively small 
value. A one-inch air space is practically as good as 
a two-inch or thicker space. In fact, a very thin air 
space is almost as good as a very thick one within 
reasonable limits. Roughly speaking, I would say 
that 12 inches of mill shavings placed between the 
studding of plan No. 1 would be better than the eignt 
one-imh dead-air spaces and the four-inch dead-air 
space in plan No. 2. 
No doubt the building, according to plan No. 2, 
would be frost-proof under ordinary Winter condi¬ 
tions in southwestern Virginia. Four two-inch dead- 
air spaces are only about one-half as good as eight 
one-inch dead-air spaces, as explained above. If dead- 
air spaces are used their value may be increased in 
the perpendicular walls of the building by cutting 
them off at intervals of from two to four feet. Theo¬ 
retically speaking, the ceiling of the old room need 
be only about two-thirds as thick as the side walls, 
but in practice we have usually made them about the 
same. In connection with this last question it might 
be well to state that the floor of the room might be 
insulated to some extent, as during the Fall the tem¬ 
perature of the earth would be in the neighborhood 
of 55 to 60, and by a systematic ventilation it might 
be possible to control the temperature to a lower 
point than this. During extremely cold weather it 
would be desirable to have the room open to the 
earth, as the heat from the earth would act as an 
offset to the lower outside temperature. While a 
frost-proof house constructed along the lines suggest¬ 
ed above is beneficial in obtaining a uniform tempera¬ 
ture during the Fall and Winter, the results to be ob¬ 
tained are nowhere near equal to those to be had 
when using an improved system of cooling. The im¬ 
proved results in the way of maintaining uniform 
temperatures to be obtained by a good system of cool¬ 
ing will warrant the installing of a refrigerating 
equipment. During the months of October and No¬ 
vember, even as late as December, there are times 
when a continued warm spell will do great damage to 
fruit stored in a frost-proof house with no means of 
holding the temperature down. Probably many read¬ 
ers can well remember times when their apples have 
rotted badly during a week or two of unseasonably 
warm weather during the late Fall or early Winter. 
A good refrigerating system will pay for itself very 
quickly under these conditions. Even during ordi¬ 
nary Fall weather, if the apples or other fruit could 
be held down to a suitable temperature of about 30 
degrees Fahrenheit there would be much less loss 
from rotting, and the general quality of the fruit 
would be better when it is removed from storage. 
MADISON COOI’Elt. 
J. E. MORSE—A USEFUL CITIZEN. 
We are glad to show at Fig. 247 a likeness of J. E. 
Morse, who for more than a year has conducted the 
department of “Everybody’s Garden” in The R. N.-Y. 
Mr. Morse may be truly described as “a useful citi¬ 
zen”—and what higher compliment can be paid a 
working American? As readers know The R. N.-Y. 
is not given to telling a long story of what a man 
has done in the past. The great value of past per¬ 
formance is to serve as a rudder to steer the promise 
of the future. Mr. Morse has lived a busy and hon¬ 
orable life. He was born on a Michigan farm, his 
parents combining missionary work with that of 
farming. Their life was one of toil and hardship, 
but it gave the boy a love for the farm, a clear un¬ 
derstanding of the problems which confront the poor 
man on the soil, and an intense desire to be of ser¬ 
vice to his fellows. These qualities were strength¬ 
ened and made keener by the Doy’s later experience 
as teacher, editor, farmer and gardener. His life 
story would read like a romance if we were able to 
J. E. MORSE—A USEFUL CITIZEN. Fig. 247. 
print it. These things qualify Mr. Morse to write in¬ 
telligently and helpfully for those who most need 
help. No wonder we are often t Id that “Everybody’s 
Garden” is the best garden department to be found 
in any paper devoted to soil culture. Mr. Morse 
writes with hands that are hard and blistered by 
actual work in the soil, out of a heart that carries a 
warm feeling for those who toil. In the future he 
will have more to say about the children’s garden, 
and we remind our readers that he is always ready 
to answer questions about garden matters. 
VALUE OF COVER CROPS. 
'i'he season of the year when most cultivated crops 
have been harvested will soon be here. The ground 
will then be bare unless some cover crop is sown. To 
many farmers it seems like a waste of time and en¬ 
ergy to sow a crop which is to be plowed under early 
in the Spring or which may be killed by the Winter’s 
cold. Those who have observed the severe washing 
which has taken place during the past two months 
on many corn and potato fields will realize a double 
need of protecting such fields when the crop is re¬ 
moved. Sidehills are very likely to be gullied by Fall 
and Winter rains. A large amount of soil will otten 
be carried to lower fields or into the streams. This 
is not the only loss, however, for the more soluble 
elements of plant food are removed from the soil at 
the same time. These may be caught on a neighbor’s 
farm but are more likely to find their way into the 
streams. 
There are two advantages in cover crops which 
grow in the late Fall and early Spring. Such crops 
hold the surface of the soil, preventing washing, and 
will take up the soluble elements of plant food. On 
account of their power to gather nitrogen from the 
air the legumes should be grown when possible. The 
best crop we have used in this way is common Red 
clover, sown at the rate of 20 pounds to the acre. 
This should be sown in New England in August or not 
later than the first week in September, if sown alone. 
After that date the best crop to use is rye sown at the 
rate of 1 y 2 bushel to the acre. When the land is not 
wanted for an early crop the next season it is a good 
plan to sow clover with the rye at the rate of 10 to 12 
pounds per acre. At the New Jersey Experiment Sta¬ 
tion Crimson clover sown in the corn in August and 
plowed under for corn again the next Spring has 
proven nearly equal to a high-grade commercial ferti¬ 
lizer. In New England, except for a narrow belt at 
the south, this crop has not proven reliable as a Win¬ 
ter and Spring cover. In our experience, in central 
Connecticut, it winterkills about three Winters out of 
four. Rye will grow at all times when the ground is 
not actually frozen at the surface. This crop differs 
from clover in not gathering nitrogen from the air, 
yet it will prevent a great waste from the soil by stor¬ 
ing up nitrogen until the rye can be plowed under 
preparatory for another crop. c. s. phelps. 
PEACH TREES AND THE YELLOWS. 
Are Any Sections Free From It? 
There is no doubt that it is wise to get peach trees 
from nurseries outside the regions where Peach yel¬ 
lows exists, but the disease is so prevalent in the 
eastern United States that this is difficult to do, ex¬ 
cept within only small areas. Over the lower half of 
the Chesapeake Peninsula there is no Peach yellows, 
and the same is true of most parts of Virginia where 
peaches are grown commercially. While there are a 
few small places where this disease exists, so far as 
is known, in the extensive peach growing region 
which includes North Carolina, Tennessee and north¬ 
ern Georgia, it is not there to a very dangerous de¬ 
gree. Nursery trees from there are not likely to have 
this terrible malady, and they may be planted with 
considerable safety. The same is true of the peach 
trees from nurseries in nearly all other sections of 
the country, because great care is used to select good 
seeds and buds from healthy trees for use in propaga¬ 
tion. Peach yellows is rarely propagated from seeds 
grown on diseased trees because such seeds will 
scarcely ever grow and the same is true of the buds in 
a less degree. But it is exceedingly dangerous to pro¬ 
pagate from any such stock, and nothing but the 
most exacting care will prevent its spread in this 
way, where the disease is in the vicinity. In planting 
I would prefer peach trees grown in nurseries in a sec¬ 
tion where the yellows does not exist. But, there is 
so much buying and selling of peach trees by almost 
every nurseryman that we are rarely sure of the na¬ 
tive locality of the trees that we get from any of 
them. All that the planter can do in the matter is to 
use all possible means to have a guarantee of their 
exemption from disease. In regard to there being no 
great danger of yellows if peach trees are “given the 
best of care and feeding” 1 do not believe that feeding 
will either prevent or cure the disease, but extreme 
care in burning every affected tree as soon as seen 
will keep it within reasonable bounds almost any¬ 
where. This is my opinion formed after many years 
of observation, but I have never been obliged to have 
a hand to hand fight with Peach yellows. 
H. E. VAN DEMAN. 
STOREKEEPERS AND THEIR WAGES. 
In your issue of August 9 a wrong impression is con¬ 
veyed" when you say that “Mr. Lewis and son do not 
figure their own labor any more than a storekeeper does.” 
In behalf of the storekeepers, I would say that all store¬ 
keepers who carry on their business in a proper manner 
do figure their services on a cash basis. That is, they 
allow themselves a salary which is paid before the profits 
of the business are estimated. In farming, the same rule 
should prevail, otherwise all figures concerning the ex¬ 
penses in carrying on a farm are misleading. If the fam¬ 
ily is large enough to do all the work, there would be no 
cash outlay for labor, but in estimating the cost of work¬ 
ing the farm the labor of each member should be put in 
at the market value. There probably are merchants who 
take money and goods from the store, for their personal 
use without charging them, but it is a bad business And 
a wrong principle. In the bookkeeping of the farm or 
business of any kind, the owner stands in the position of 
an employee. If the farm will not pay all employees. In¬ 
cluding the owner of the farm, reasonable wages, it is a 
losing business. H. n. r. 
Hartford, Conn. , 
FAMILY FRIENDS.—The little picture shown at 
Fig. 246 was sent by a Connecticut friend who says 
of it: “The picture shows the oldest and youngest 
members of my family, and the best part is that 
neither knew that they were going to have their 
picture taken. Maybe some say that the rooster Is 
either tied or dead, but they are wrong, for he was 
very much alive and not tied either. He was so tame 
that you could lead him just as well as a dog.” 
