1906. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
347 
MISTAKES IN A COOLING ROOM. 
In February I completed the filling of an icehouse 12x12 
feet outside measurement, built over a walled cellar 10x10 
feet, 514 feet deep, which is entered through a door from 
an outside cellar or cave ; that is, the room under the ice¬ 
house was originally a part of a cave, but is now separated 
from cave by eight-inch brick partition wall in which is door 
entrance to cool room. Provision is made for carrying off 
water from melting ice by slanting joists from center to outer 
end, one inch in six feet. Hard pine matched flooring is used 
for ice floor, over which is laid sheet zinc. Ice is laid on 
this zinc-covered floor with nothing between except three- 
eigliths-inch batten to provide for escape of water into small 
troughs about four inches from inside walls of superstructure, 
whence it is discharged at either of the four corners. Floor 
of cool room cemented in bottom. Can I reasonably expect 
cold from ice to penetrate through tight floor and zinc suffi¬ 
cient ly to make cool room cool? Would zinc pipe passing 
through (cut through) floor to underside of zinc which covers 
ice floor and leading down through cool room and through 
cement floor into the ground help to make the room cool with¬ 
out impairment of ice-keeping qualities of ice room above? 
Would holes cut in floor (not through zinc) serve any good 
purpose without injury to ice? In present arrangement is 
ice liable to melt at bottom? Should room be kept practically 
airtight? Is dampness liable to defeat purpose of cool room? 
Nekoma, Ill. J- F. 
The construction adopted by your correspondent is 
not such as to utilize the cooling effect of the ice to 
best advantage. The non-conducting character of the 
hard pine floor is such as not to allow the rapid cooling 
of the air which comes in contact with it, but lying as 
it does, immediately in contact with the 
metal lining under the ice, it will be 
cold enough to condense any moisture 
which may come from the products of the 
cool room, and keep it continually damp, 
possibly to the extent of causing it to 
drip if the contained products carry mois¬ 
ture enough to permit of sufficient con¬ 
densation, and sooner or later causing the 
floor and the joists to decay, particularly 
if the ice chamber is empty before the 
beginning of Winter. The construction 
which should have been adopted to se¬ 
cure the most effective cool room is to 
make the ice floor of 2 x 4s laid about 
half an inch apart and to use the galvan¬ 
ized sheet iron or sheet zinc, if the latter 
is what your correspondent has used, 
below the joists of the icehouse floor, ar¬ 
ranging it to carry off the drip, while at 
the same time the air of the cool room 
would be permitted to pass up into actual 
contact with ice, to be cooled and de¬ 
prived of its moisture by having it con¬ 
densed upon the ice to pass away with the 
drip water. The simplest arrangement 
to permit this would be to use sheets 
of galvanized iron, say 30 inches wide, 
nailing them to strips of batten the prop¬ 
er distance apart, nailed to the under sides 
of the joists, but with their ends an 
inch lower than the center, to provide 
drainage, and close enough together to 
make the sheets a little hollowing in the 
center, so as to draw the drip away from 
the batten. These sheets of galvanized 
iron would be placed far enough apart so 
as to leave a gap between them about 
four inches less than the width of the 
sheets of metal; then these spaces would 
be covered with the same metal secured 
in the same way, except that the strips 
of batten would be placed directly under 
those carrying the first sheets, and nailed through the 
first sheets, but cut away in many places, perhaps to the 
extent of half the stock, so as to leave free spaces for 
air to pass in and out, giving the necessary circulation 
in contact with the ice to cool and dry it. 
It is not likely that either of the methods your cor¬ 
respondent suggests would be sufficiently effective, cer¬ 
tainly the latter one would not. Galvanized iron pipe 
let up through the floor into the ice chamber would 
allow air to circulate and increase the cooling effect, 
but it would require too many to be sufficiently effec¬ 
tive. The ice will of course melt on the bottom, and 
could not be effective in the cool room if it did not. 
The cool room should be kept as tightly closed as 
possible, so that there shall be as little leakage of air 
out of it as may be, because the more leakage out of 
the cool room the more air will come in through the 
ice, causing unnecessary waste. The surface of the ice, 
too, in the icehouse should be maintained thoroughly 
and deeply covered with sawdust or other non-con¬ 
ductor so as both to shut off the heat from the roof 
and walls and to lessen the down draft of air into 
the ice. Your correspondent says nothing regarding 
the construction of the walls of the cool room except 
that it is a part of a “walled cellar.” These walls pre¬ 
sumably are stone, and if they are solid they will take 
on the ground temperature and of course tend to hold 
the air in the cellar up to that temperature. This 
warmed air will be displaced upward against the ice 
as the cold air from the ice forces it upward. The 
cool room walls therefore should be poor conductors 
of heat. This could be secured by lining with wood, 
but a more durable lining would be had by using the" 
lath tile, which would form a dead air space. 
F. H. KING. 
SHORT SUCCESSION OF FORAGE CROPS. 
One man on a farm of 30 acres of tillable land, cutting 
18 tons hay, poor pasture (10 cows, 200 hens) wishes to re¬ 
duce his work to a minimum to avoid hiring help as much 
as possible, and has determined to do no planting of general 
crops beyond a good garden for a family of four, but intends 
to plant six acres of corn, enough to fill silo of 35 tons 
capacity to be opened late in Winter or early Spring after 
the remainder of the corn has been fed out dry, or green 
during late Summer, early Fail and Winter after having 
been cut up. What crop or crops would you recommend 
between corn and sowing to grass? Would you recommend 
any change in general plan? I judge the crops between, 
(for sake of reducing work if a proper rotation) should be 
something like oats, rye (there is good market for rye 
straw), Hungarian, or the sowing of a certain amount of 
grass land in August directly to grass. Would dressing fur¬ 
nished by the cows, hens, two horses and five hogs, furnish 
all that could be used by one man who had with him a man 
for say three months of year? Manure from stable horses 
at $4 a cord; would you buy any and how much? Hay 
sells at $15 to $18 or $20. The land is all level as a 
prairie, not a rock, not heavy, not light land, above average 
of vicinity of Boston. If no manure or fertilizer is bought, 
should there be any crop of hay to sell in accordance with 
the plan of rotation you would advise? Could we plant six 
acres of corn or would you advise less? I mean, would 
dressing made on place be best used in that way? How 
strongly would you manure crops you advise? The man 
has bottles washed and filled and delivers milk which takes 
him 2% to three hours a day, also hens fed. w. R. 
Massachusetts. 
First of all we would send to the New Jersey Experi¬ 
ment Station and obtain bulletins showing how the milk 
dairy is conducted. At this station each acre except the 
land in grass yields two or three separate crops of for¬ 
age each year. For example, part of the land is kept 
year after year in corn. At the last cultivation Crim¬ 
son clover is seeded in this corn. This grows through 
the Fall and again in the Spring, giving excellent green 
forage or hay. The stubble is plowed under for corn 
again, and so on year after year, the soil growing more 
productive each year. If Crimson clover would thrive 
in your country we would sow it at the last working 
of the corn. Cut the clover about the middle of May 
and seed the land to either Canada peas and oats or 
Wonderful cow peas. Cut these crops when mature 
for hay or green fodder, and then work up the stubble 
thoroughly for grass seeding. The chances are that 
Crimson clover will not do well with you. In that case 
we would sow rye in the corn, cut it early in Spring, 
and follow with the oats and peas or cow peas. It 
would be possible, in some seasons, to cut the rye very 
early, sow oats and peas, cut this crop when green, 
work up the soil and sow cow peas—cutting this crop 
in time for grass seeding. The objection to this plan 
is the large amount of work required in fitting the land, 
but this can be largely saved, if you have a strong 
team, by using a Cutaway harrow, well loaded down. 
We would not sow grass after grass, for unless you 
spend more time in breaking up the old sod than you 
would in growing the cow peas or oats and peas you will 
not have a good meadow. In this way you will have 
each year six acres of corn, six of rye and peas and 18 
of grass—or you can change the amount as you please. 
We would puc all your manure on the corn ground each 
year. This corn ground will be the three-year-old sod, 
and the manure can be hauled and spread on it at 
any time after cutting the grass. After plowing the 
manure under we would use one ton of acid phosphate 
and 600 pounds of muriate of potash on the six acres, 
broadcast and harrowed in. We would prefer these 
chemicals to the manure at $4 a cord. This ought to 
give two fair crops of grass as well as the corn. For 
the third grass crop we would use at least 600 pounds 
per acre of a high-grade potato fertilizer. With a 
portable fence and the field in cow peas you could use 
that crop for pasture—both for cows and pigs, and 
thus save the work of cutting and curing the hay. 
t( DRAG THE ROAD/' 
Under “Brevities,” on page 196, you ask a question 
that strikes home forcibly. You seem to think because 
a man grades and fits the roadside in front of his 
farm and turns it into a beautiful lawn, 
then in a muddy season the drivers desert 
the road and travel the entire length on 
this smooth grass, the Recording Angel 
might with propriety look away and turn 
a deaf ear to some bad thought or even 
bad language this man is tempted to use. 
Now, I did this very thing; I worked, 
graded and fitted the roadside in front 
of my farm; I hauled on to it several 
loads of rotted manure, that I badly need¬ 
ed on my truck patch; I sowed expensive 
lawn grass; I clipped it. when I should 
have spent the time in weeding onions, 
and now the road being simply impassable 
people that of necessity must travel over 
it in sheer desperation turn from it on 
to this “smooth” grass. Now, under the 
conditions, what sort of language would 
I be j ustified in using, and how would 
such language look in print? I might do 
like a neighbor, lay rails on this smooth 
grass and thus prevent people from get- 
ing on to it, but I do not think it would 
be lawful, as this road, from fence to 
fence, belongs to the traveling public, and 
not to me individually, so if I go to work 
and turn public property used as a road 
into a lawn, I can see no way out but to 
suffer the consequences. I must here 
confess that I love to see a nice roadside 
in front of a farm, and in this instance 
will say that I can blame only myself 
for the way it is now cut up. Had I grad¬ 
ed the roadbed first in front of my farm, 
and put in first-class condition to travel 
on, and kept it up as I expect to do now, 
in a way that it will not tempt travelers 
to leave it, then fixed up the roadside, 
no one would think of cutting up this 
smooth grass. I have graded the road 
now, and have made a drag of two pieces 
of oak timber 6x6 inches, eight feet long, 
set on sharp edges, a strip of heavy wagon tire spiked 
to cutting edge. These sticks I have bolted together a 
foot apart with a chain in front to hitch to, so that I 
can run the drag in any desired angle, and from now 
on propose to adhere strictly to the advice given in the 
following poem: 
When the smiles of Spring appear, 
Drag the road; 
When the Summer-time is here, 
Drag the road; 
When the corn is in the ear, 
In the Winter cold and drear; 
Every season in the year; 
Drag the road! 
When you've nothing else to do, 
Drag the road. 
If but for an hour or two. 
Drag the road. 
It will keep them good as new. 
With a purpose firm and true. 
Fall in line—it’s up to you : 
Drag the road. 
Would you do the proper thing? 
Drag the road. 
Set the system on the wing. 
Drag the road. 
Give the drag a lively swing, 
Toss the laurel-wreath to King. 
Hats off! everybody sing. 
Drag the road. 
J. H. BOLLINGER. 
You have no doubt wished before now that people could 
be hung for doing things which you do not approve. Did 
you ever stop to think that others may have desired the 
same of you? M 
SWEET SCABIOUS OR MOURNING BRIDE. MUCH REDUCED. Fig. 139. 
See Ruralisms, Page 352. 
