NEW YORK, JUNE 13, 1896. 
?1.00 PER YEAR. 
Vol. LV. No. 2420. 
A ONE-MAN NEW HAMPSHIRE FARM. 
EARNS THAT SAVE A HIRED .MAN. 
The Best Outfit of Live Stock. 
A friend in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, who 
is too modest to have his name printed, as he does not 
like to advertise publicly his home, sends us this 
account of a new barn : “ At Figs. 130 and 131 are 
shown plans of a barn I designed and built two years 
ago. I hope it may interest or benefit some of your 
readers, as I have often been helped by suggestions 
from others of your subscribers. 
“The barn stands on a side-hill, and has three stories. 
For the first or basement, Fig. 130, we dug away a 
strip 11 feet wide, corresponding to the main drive¬ 
way overhead, so that all the rest of the floor is above 
ground—there is no cellar about it. There are drains 
inside the walls, and one through the middle, and the 
entire surface is always perfectly dry. The floor, ex¬ 
cept the cattle 
stalls, is of the 
natural clay, 
leveled and 
pounded hard. 
The stall floors 
are of cement, 
with a pitch of 
two inches in 
nine feet for 
drainage. At 
the rear end of 
the stalls, is a 
little cement 
gutter, three 
inches deep and 
four wide, 
which carries 
the urine into 
the manure pit, 
which is four 
feet lower than 
the basement 
floor, and is 
cemented. 
“My method 
o f pasturing 
cattle is not 
original with 
me. I saw a 
modification of 
it given in some 
paperyears ago 
but have for¬ 
gotten whose 
plan it is. In 
front of the 
cows, is a V- 
shaped manger, the upper edge of which is about 25 
inches from the end of the stall, and 28 inches from 
the floor. The cows are tied with a halter, just like 
a horse. When standing, the manger keeps them 
back ; when they lie down, their heads go under the 
manger,and they are lying in a perfectly clean place. 
In the past two winters, I have not had a teaspoonful 
of dirt on a cow’s bag, and the cows have freedom to 
step back and forth, and can lick themselves all over. 
It is a perfect success with me. All partitions in the 
basement, except to the manure pit and root cellar, 
are low (four feet), so the whole is very light and airy. 
There are large windows in the double doors of the 
sheep fold, and as that side is sheltered by the bank, 
those doors are all open a good part of the day. Cows 
in milk step around to the tub for water, but rarely 
go outdoors during the winter. 
“The door on the east opens into a pasture of 100 
acres, and as they are always fed and milked in the 
barn, they are always at the door night and morning 
in summer. On the north of the manure pit is a shed 
for sundries, the roof of which runs only to the floor 
of the second story. 
“The second floor, Fig. 131, has the main driveway 
on the gable end, 11 feet wide and 12 feet high, with 
a big door at each end. On the south end, is left 
room for two carriages and sleigh and harness closet, 
also grain bins, which are filled at the top from the 
wagon. Next are the stairs to the basement, then a 
passage to the horse stable, and finally, a box stall 
for a stallion. The whole west side of this box is 
made to swing, so that in cold weather, a carriage 
may be run in there to wash. The stall is over the 
manure pit, and drains into it. The stall has a door 
on the opposite side, so that the horse may be fed and 
cared for from the stable side. 
“ Beside the stallion stall, are four single stalls, near¬ 
ly five feet wide, and two box stalls about 9 x 10 each. 
The box opposite the passage, has a movable parti¬ 
tion, so that the doors may come off and two horses 
be put in there. The partitions are solid five feet up 
from the floor, and finished to the ceiling with a sheet 
of four-inch mesh expanded metal. The horses can 
see each other, and there are no dark corners. The 
stalls have a pitch of two inches in nine feet for drain¬ 
age into an iron gutter, which runs into the manure 
pit. There are no mangers—except an iron feed box 
in the box stalls. Hay and grain are eaten from the 
floor, with no waste. 
“ The water tub is shown, and openings to the grain 
bins are next to it. The hay from the floor above, 
comes down the chutes into the passage behind the 
horses, and is fed from there, and a trapdoor in the 
same passage lets hay down to the basement feeding 
alley. The manure scuttle is shown at the north end. 
Our cold winds are from the west, so all animals are 
on the warm side of the building, and with the mer¬ 
cury at 18 degrees below zero, the water does not 
freeze on either floor, If the south single stall is 
unoccupied, the windows in the passage north and 
south give draught, which does not strike the horses, 
and in cold weather, perfect ventilation may be had 
through the hay chutes to the roof. 
“On the main driveway, are trapdoors to the root 
cellar, sawdust bin and sheep fold. 
“ The third story is for hay, which is put up with a 
horse-fork, through a six-foot square opening over 
the middle of the driveway. The stairs leading to the 
loft are in the driveway, hinged at the top, and when 
not in use, may be run up by weights to the ceiling, 
out of the way. The whole barn is clapboarded and 
painted, with heavy sheathing paper under the clap¬ 
boards, so that no wind gets in except through the 
doors and windows. 
“Many criticised the barn while it was being built, 
because it was so small—it is 35 feet square inside 
measurement—but as I keep no hired man, and have 
no boys, I wish everything as snug and convenient as 
possible, in 
order to do the 
work. It will 
not hold all my 
hay, but there 
is another 
building for 
surplus hay and 
wagons and 
farming tools, 
and this loft 
will hold near¬ 
ly 25 tons of hay 
if well packed. 
Of course, this 
barn was ar¬ 
ranged to ac¬ 
commodate the 
kind of stock I 
wished to keep. 
If any one wish 
to keep more 
cattle,the 
sheep pens 
could easily be 
fitted for 10 or 
12 cows to be 
fed from the 
same feeding 
alley. And the 
stallion stall 
could be con¬ 
verted into a 
harness room 
or office, with 
stove, etc.” 
A view of the 
farm house is 
shown at Fig. 129. It evidently stands in a command¬ 
ing situation, and with its wide piazzas and clean 
back door and yard, seems, in many respects, like a 
model farm home. 
Our friend states that he keeps no hired man. When 
asked to state what live stock can best be handled 
without hired help, he replies : “My individual pref¬ 
erence is for sheep and horses. I keep a good-sized, 
well-bred stallion, which is an ideal road horse, and 
does enough work on the farm to pay for his keep 
twice over, leaving all service fees clear profit. In 
addition, there are, generally, eight or ten other 
horses, brood mares and colts, some my own, and 
some boarders. Six or eight horses kept during the 
winter, at prices which city owners are quite willing 
to pay for the care of their carriage and road horses, 
will bring in more money than twice that number of 
cows, kept the entire year, and with less than a 
quarter of the labor. 
“ There is kept, a small flock of sheep, anywhere 
