934 
any other in the country. Much of this high-class 
farming is done with little or no live stock—the 
land being kept alive and productive by the use of 
cover crops, lime and chemicals. We have no doubt 
that we can lind Alfalfa farms in New York State 
which produce as much Alfalfa per acre as good 
Illinois land. This New York land will he held at 
about half the price of the Illinois land, while the 
products will bring at least 30 per cent. more. Not 
all New York land is as good as that! Much of it 
is poor, and any man settling on it would have a 
hard struggle unless he had capital enough to drain 
and lime and wait for results. New York is not 
“booming" her farm lands and does not need to do 
so. We do not want dissatisfied citizens. The farms 
have now been well classified, and prices fairly in¬ 
dicate values. Land which sells at $30 per acre is 
usually worth that and no more, bind at $100 
is worth three times as mnch as the other—the in¬ 
creased value representing superior soil, location, 
ease of cultivation, roads and market facilities. 
Apples in Farm Storage. 
An Orchard Cellar. 
I have an apple orchard of 19 acres, York Im¬ 
perial, four plantings, ranging in age from 12 to 
two years. Last year (1914) we built a fruit cellar, 
built it in a bank near the center of the orchard. 
The walls and roof are concrete with ground floor. 
The inside dimensions are 37 feet east and west, 16 
feet wide, 9% high in the center and walls seven 
feet high, with a door in each end. At the west 
end door a flight of steps; at the east end the door 
is level with the driveway. Three rows of round 
peeled posts, three stringers and 18 sets of rafters 
constitute the framework. The center row of posts 
(six) are about eight inches in diameter and the 
two side rows placed midway between the center 
row and the side walls are six inches in diameter. 
The stringer on top of the center row of posts is 
(5x6 inches, the other two stringers are 4x5 inches, 
and the rafters are 3x5 inches. A bent of six inches 
on the side stringers gives the roof near the shape of 
an arch. When the walls were built 2x4’s were laid 
along the inside edge at the top of the side-walls to 
form a seat for the heel of the rafters, and the rafters' 
were cut at the bent and the peak to meet each 
other, so that each set of rafters forms a truss. Two 
lines of six-inch terra-cotta tile placed under the 
floor on each side of the center row of posts run 
from the outside face of the east wall to within a 
foot or two of the west Avail, with slight slope to 
act as drain as well as to ventilate. Four four-inch 
tiles connect with the six-inch tiles on each side of 
the floor and with elbows reach the floor surface, 
making eight openings about two feet from the side 
walls located not to interfere with the posts. The 
overhead ventilators, three, were made of galvan¬ 
ized iron three feet long, eight inches diameter, ta¬ 
pered to six inches with flanges to bed in the cement 
and with caps to exclude rain. The inside frame¬ 
work helps to support the roof and makes it con¬ 
venient to nail strips to lay floors, and saves the 
exj»ense of crates for storing. A crate placed npside 
down over the elbows and sacking spread on the 
floor allows the first layer of fruit to be poured on 
the ground floor. The second floor was placed 18 
inches above the ground floor, the third floor two feet 
above the second, the fourth floor taking the space 
to the roof. The round posts prevent cutting and 
bruising the fruit The outside opening of the tiles 
was enclosed with a three-sided box structure with 
a hinged lid to regulate ventilation, and the tile 
openings were covered with one-quarter inch mesh 
wire netting to exclude rodents. 
Screen doors were used when the weather was 
cool and at night, and inside doors were closed when 
the weather was very warm. When cold weather 
came the temperature with the doors closed was 
almost constant 38 deg., except zero weather when 
the temperature would rise to 40 or 42 deg. The 
cellar, walls with t he exception of part of the north¬ 
east corner and nearly three-quarters of the east end 
is entirely in the bank. The walls are from nine to 
13 inches in thickness and the roof five inches 
—six-inch projection at east end—with eight to 
10 inches of dirt on top. Nearly 10 tons of 
cement were used, and the concrete made thin 
enough so that it could be conveyed in troughs into 
the forms for the walls. The stones for crushing, 
sand and water were all near at hand. The cost 
of excavating and building was about $3; 1.500 bush¬ 
els can be stored, allowing six inches space be¬ 
tween the fruit and the floors for ventilation. The 
cost for crates that would stand “stacking” to fill 
the building would reach $300. Any common lumber 
cut three feet eleven inches and spaced one inch 
will do for floors. During the picking season 1.400 
bushels were stored but on account of the green eon- 
the rural xew-yorker 
dition of the building and the moisture from the 
cement it was a risk to store any large quantity 
for the first trial. Two hundred bushels were stored 
to the middle of March and kept well enough to 
please anyone. j. h. m. 
Dickinson, Pa. 
Storage Buildings 
Cold storage apparatus of the modern improved 
form is too expensive for general use by individual 
fruit growers, and it is a question whether it is not 
usually best where a large amount of fruit is raised, 
for the grower to patronize the owners of cold stor¬ 
age plants rather than build for his own use. Cool¬ 
ing rooms adapted to the storage of small fruits 
or where a small amount of fruit is grown, can be 
used to advantage on every fruit farm. These need 
not be expensive, and often an old building may be 
refitted and made to answer the purjiose. The chief 
requirements are to arrange for thorough insula¬ 
tion against outside changes of temperature. This 
July 24, 1915. 
must have a sneet iron covering. The floor of the 
ice chamber is laid with 2x4-incli lumber with one 
inch space between. This provides for air circula¬ 
tion and water drainage. A sloping catch floor leads 
the water into the gutter which carries it down and 
out through the cooling room. A . r. 
Arrangement of Ice and Storage Rooms. Fig. 344. 
can be most satisfactorily arranged by the use of 
dead-air spaces and building paper. There should 
be at least two well-constructed dead-air spaces 
about the storage room. These should be made in 
the floor and roof as well as in the walls. The win¬ 
dows, if such are found necessary should consist of 
at least three sashes set closely together so as to 
make two tight dead-air spaces between. It will be 
found that rooms above ground surrounded by well- 
made dead-air spaces, I believe, are more satisfac¬ 
tory for cooling fruit, than cellars. The cost of a 
cellar is nearly as much, and the stone, cement or 
brick walls used ordinarily in cellars are good con¬ 
ductors of heat, so are poor material for the wall 
of a storage. 
A fruit grower can care for his fruit to an ad¬ 
vantage by the use of ice. In Figs. 344 and 345 I 
have tried to show a good method of constructing 
a storage house, large enough to hold a couple of 
carloads of apples, with provisions for the use of 
ice to lower the temperature. Locate the building 
on a hillside of such a slope that the first floor will 
be on a level of the surface at one end and the sec¬ 
ond floor a few feet above the surface of the other. 
The building is 18 by 40 feet, two stories in height 
and divided in four rooms, two on each floor. On 
the second floor is the ice storage room, 18x20 feet, 
in which the future supply of ice is stored, and the 
ice chamber 18x18 feet in which is held the ice that 
covers the storage room below. The refrigerating 
room is lSxlS feet, and is the compartment in 
which the temperature is to be reduced, and in 
which the products are to be stored. The other 
room on the lower floor is used as a general pur¬ 
pose storage cellar. The entrance to the lower floor 
opens into this room. The flooring is laid tight in 
the ice storage room, and provided with a slope 
toward the centre. The gutters catch the drainage 
and carry it into the gutter from the ice chamber. 
To prevent leakage the floor of the storage room 
A Ninety Ton Silo for Ninety Dollars. 
Part I. 
N EARLY every farmer is convinced that he needs 
a silo. The economical feeding of the dairy 
cow makes one almost indispensable. The fact that 
the corn plant is so well adapted to this method of 
storage, produces such a large tonnage per acre over 
such a widely distributed area, and that the food so 
stored is relished by stock, is probably the main 
reason why the silo is so popular. Then there is 
the reason of economy; economy both in the food 
itself and the method of storing it. No other food 
approaching well ripened coni silage in feeding value 
can be had at any where near the price. This is be¬ 
cause of the great tonnage per acre and the ease 
with which it is cared for. No other building on the 
farm designed as a shelter for roughage houses any¬ 
where near the same amount of digestible dry mat¬ 
ter per cubic foot that the silo does. 
Prof. King tells us that the average weight of 
silage per cubic foot, in a 30-foot silo is about 40 
pounds, 39.6 pounds to be exact. Henry finds in the 
average analysis of corn silage that there are 16.3 
pounds digestible dry matter in 100 pounds. With 
these figures as a basis it is easily computed that 
there are 6.52 pounds of digestible dry matter in 
each cubic foot of silage and that a 14x30 foot silo 
will contain 30,110.35 pounds of digestible dry 
matter. 
From the same source we learn that the average 
weight of mixed hay in the mow is around five 
pounds to the cubic foot and that it contains 84.7% 
digestible dry matter. This means that every cubic 
foot of hay stored under average conditions contains 
4.235 pounds of digestible dry matter. If the 14x30 
silo above mentioned were filled with this hay it 
would contain only 19,557.87 pounds of digestible 
dry matter as against 30,110.35 pounds when filled 
with silage—a difference of over 5*4 tons in favor 
of the silage. This is surely worth looking into. 
However, it is not the purpose of this article to 
tell of the need of a silo—every dairyman knows 
of that—but rather to tell how to build one, and 
from material obtained from the farm itself so that 
the cost will be low. Adjoining us lies a section of 
the State in which the Curler silo has been and is 
being much built. If I am informed correctly a cer¬ 
tain leading citizen becoming interested in silos 
went to Mr. Curler's place to see his silo and upon 
his return a silo of the same type was built upon 
his farm. This has since served as a model, with a 
few minor changes, for silos built in that locality. 
This was some ten or twelve years ago and I am 
told that the original silo is still in use. The mate¬ 
rial for the Curler silo can usually lie got out of 
trees found growing on the place and all worked up 
at the nearest sawmill with the exception of a little 
planed material for the doors and casings. 
The Curler silo is made by setting up studding in 
a circle and lining the inside with half-inch lumber 
put *on horizontally, forming a huge cheese box. 
This is then lathed with beveled lath and plastered 
with a cement plaster. The wall construction is 
plainly shown in Fig. 347, which shows a vertical 
section of the wall, giving the size and position of 
each of the members used in the wall construction. 
No hoops are needed as the boarding and lath being 
put on horizontally, act in this capacity. The swamp 
elm that is so plentiful in this section, makes a very 
good material for this boarding and lath. It is 
cheap, pliant and strong. It should be cut during 
the Winter and so piled that it will dry out as little 
as possible, using it in the Spring before it seasons. 
The first step in the actual building of one of 
these silos is laying out the foundation. A point 
is located at what will be the exact center of the 
silo floor and a post driven firmly into the ground. 
Use a bar and put it down solidly as the greater 
part of the silo will be laid out with this as a cen¬ 
ter. The circular trench is next laid out for the 
silo foundation. This is done by boring a small 
hole in one end of a 2x4 scantling to fit over a head¬ 
less spike put in the top of the post. Toward the 
other end at a proper distance to secure the right 
diameter, two sharpened pieces of board are nailed 
at right angles to the scantling, with their points 
projecting downward and one foot apart. This is 
swung about the nail in the top of the post as a 
center, tracing a double circle on the ground. As 
the scantling has to be kept level to insure a true 
circle, it is best to nail a couple of strips across the 
bottom of these pieces and another near the top. A 
