BAUXS. 
407 
Those who cannot readily command sawed pine can get just as 
good a frame by hewing it in their own woods, if they have any. 
Very poor indeed must be the timber tract that will not furnish a 
good barn frame. It is not necessary that sills or plates, or even 
beams, except the two outside ones, should be in one piece. It is 
cheaper, especially where timber grows with a rapid tapering to- 
w'ards the top, to make splices — very plain ones for sills — than 
to hew down the large ends of longer sticks. Many of the timbers 
need not be straight, notably the beams. They may be quite 
crooked up and down. Many of the posts may also be crooked. 
Most parts of the frame may be of any timber that grows large 
enough; basswood, poplar, elm, are all good enough for beams and 
plates if not hewed too long before being framed. All the oaks, 
red elm, and butternut are g^od for sills and posts. Even posts 
that do not form the sides of doors may be of basswood or poplar. 
Sleepers, joists, girts and rafters may be brought from the woods. 
The groves of slim poplars that we often see, would furnish excel¬ 
lent rafters; oak, basswood, or elm will make good floor boards over 
horses and cattle; oak or elm will make passable roof boards, if 
they are kept in good shape till about ready to lay shingles over 
them. For stable floors oak is too slippery, and the other woods 
rot easily if kept wet. You need not have cmy stable floor of wood 
at first. Frame the stable high enough so there will be room for a 
floor when you want one; but in the mean time lay your wall tight 
up to the sills all around the stable. This should be done even if 
floor is laid. Fill in dirt, well pounded down, to top of wall. The 
iron standard of some worn out plow buried where the stall parti¬ 
tions come will make a fixed point to attach partitions to. Now 
the horses cannot paw through the floor, and a day’s forgetfulness 
in the matter of relaying weak spots in the floor will not result in 
the ruin of a horse. Rats can have no harbor under the floor, and 
streaks of cold wind cannot pierce the horses from beneath. When 
you become dissatisfied with the dirt floor, you can put in a plank 
one at your leisure, and not a foot of lumber will be wasted in the 
experiment. The dirt floor is just as available for cows as for horses. 
Timbers buried their size in the dirt to form a gutter, and so framed 
that they cannot be pressed together, is all that is needed. Es¬ 
pecially is this plan feasible where stanchions are used. 
Of stanchions, it may be said that they are the cheapest to con- 
