212 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
['.I UKE| 
run an engine is not very great, but for any 
work such as cutting hay, grinding grain, saw¬ 
ing wood, etc., which may without disadvantage 
be postponed until a fair wind is blowing, the 
windmill has advantages that entitle it to care¬ 
ful consideration. This is only a suggestion, 
nowever. My positive advice must be confined 
lo the very important question of water supply. 
But for this it is positive, and I should not hesi¬ 
tate to recommend it in any case where a per¬ 
manent water-power can not be had. 
A correspondent from York, Pa., asks “ whe¬ 
ther the slatted floor in our pig-pen has been 
a success or a failure; whether unpleasant 
draughts from below have been prevented, and 
whether dry earth can be used to prevent foul 
smells, at a cost that will certainly pay?” The 
slatted floor certainly has been of great advan¬ 
tage, especially in a country like this, where 
straw is too dear to be freely used for bedding. 
It is the driest floor that I have ever seen, all 
moisture running directly away. We have not, 
however, found that the use of dry earth in the 
pig-pen was a success. It does absorb and de¬ 
stroy foul odors without doubt, but it also ab¬ 
sorbs urine, and becomes very wet and very 
troublesome earth, soiling the swine, clogging 
up the openings between the slats, and making 
itself generally nasty. If straw can not be 
used in abundance I prefer the dry boards. As 
to draughts from below, we are not troubled by 
them in the least, for the reason that the cellar 
is tight all around, and there is no chance for 
draughts from that source. We have not been 
especiallj'’ annoyed by odor from the manure in 
the cellar. The house is by no means sweet¬ 
smelling (as what pig-pen is?), but it is no more 
offensive than those made on any other plan, 
and the health of the piys sufficiently attests 
the wholesomeness of their quarters. 
While advocating the use of slatted floors for 
swine, I do not especially recommend them for 
cattle stables with manure cellars underneath. 
They are advantageous in all of the points pre¬ 
viously claimed for them, but they have one 
serious disadvantage that we did not previously 
foresee. With a tight floor, manure might be 
hauled out at pleasure at any time during the 
Fig. 1 —CHEAP FARM-LABORERS’ HOUSE. 
winter, without reference to wind or to tem¬ 
perature. With a slatted floor, on the contrary, 
a cold cellar means a cold stable, and we are 
sometimes unable to open the cellar door for 
months together. Of course the manure is 
keeping well all this time, but it is accumulating 
work for the busy spring-time of the year which 
it would be a great advantage to be able to 
avoid. If I were going to rebuild the barn I 
should adopt a short stall floor with a drop be¬ 
hind it as the best arrangement I know of. 
Spring is upon us, butt-end foremost, and 
winter has hardly left. Everything is fully a 
month behind, and there is no reason to suppose 
that we shall be favored with a lengthening of 
the season at the other end. With us, corn- 
planting and oat-sowing will come about toge¬ 
ther. At this time, April 27th, not an acre of 
land on the farm has been plowed, nor has any 
considerable amount of out-of-door work been 
possible. Add to the lateness of the season and 
the length and severity of the winter the fact 
that we seem to be entering upon another sea¬ 
son of severe drouth, and it will be seen that 
the prospect of profitable farming is not so flat¬ 
tering as we could wish. However, I won’t 
grumble—that is a common failing of our craft 
which it may be as well to avoid. It is always 
too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too early 
or too late, or too something else to suit our un¬ 
grateful souls; and we ought, all of us, to be 
ashamed of ourselves for being so blind to our 
advantages. With high wages, expensive living, 
hard work, unfavorable seasons, and no end of 
annoyance to pull us down, we have high prices, 
good implements, easy transportation, and ready 
markets to cheer us up, and surely no agricul¬ 
tural population in the civilized world (laborers 
included) is so well housed, so well fed, and so 
well dressed, nor held in so good consideration 
in the community as the millionsof dissatisfied, 
grumbling farmers of America. How it may 
be in what we are disposed to regard as the un¬ 
civilized world we have no means of knowing, 
but I suspect that the frugal industry and close 
economy of the cultivators of China and Japan 
produce as a result quite as much comfort and 
satisfaction as we get from our spendthrift ways. 
-- — -- --- 
Houses for Farm Help. 
Doubtless many fanners’ wives will gladly 
welcome this article with the illustrations be¬ 
longing to it. No harder nor more wearisome 
work falls to the lot of a farmer’s wife than 
the care of the “ help,” and the extra cooking 
involved. It is generally the case, too, that 
farm laborers are not just exactly the sort of 
men that we would desire our boys and girls to 
associate with, and the privacy of the family is 
interfered with when they are boarded in tbe 
house. Every inconvenience is at once avoided 
by erecting a tenant-house for occupation 
by the laborers. This also enables the farmer 
to get the most desirable and steadiest sort of 
help possible—that of a married man. With 
such help, all other hands, whether regular or 
occasional, may be provided for and entertained. 
The cost of such a house is comparatively tri¬ 
fling when the conveniences are considered. 
Figure 1 represents a two-story frame cottage 
16x24 feet. Figures 2 and 3 show the arrange¬ 
ment of the lower and upper floors. It will be 
seen that there are one large room for cooking 
and eating and two sleeping-rooms on the low¬ 
er floor, and three sleeping-rooms on the upper 
Fig. 3. —PLAN OF UPPER FLOOR. 
floor; the large upper room may be used for a 
sitting-room for boarders. Twelve people may 
very well find room with provision for perfect pri¬ 
vacy and other requisites in such a house. The 
cost of materials when built of boards, battened, 
with matched floors, plastered all through, and 
a shingle or felt roof, will be under $200. Much 
of the labor may be done by the farmer himself, 
as digging the cellar, laying up the stone foun¬ 
dation, and hauling materials. With labor and 
materials all included, $250 will be about the 
total cost. A large interest on the cost will be 
gained by the relief afforded to the owner’s 
own family, and as much more by the steadier 
and more regular kind of labor to be secured. 
If money is to be spared for a more sightly 
building, that shown at fig. 4 might be adopted. 
The inside arrangements are the same, but the 
outside is made more ornamental, and is very 
much improved by the garden planted around 
it. It is worthy of consideration here whether 
it would not be of great benefit to those farmers 
who regularly keep hired men, to make it an 
object for them to retain their places perma- 
uentl} r , and make them comfortable by providing 
them facilities for having gardens, a stable, and 
a cow and a pig of their own, as i3 done almost 
always on English farms. In that country, 
while farmers hold their farms mostly as teu- 
Fig. 4. —laborers’ house ornamented. 
ants, and would seem therefore very liable to oc¬ 
casional or frequent removals, yet on the con¬ 
trary the same family very often remain for 
generations on the same farm, and have grand¬ 
fathers, fathers, and children working for them 
at one and the same time. Under such circum¬ 
stances it is an object for them to surround 
themselves with those little comforts and con¬ 
veniences which on the whole make up much 
of the pleasure of living. 
