356 
Of the seven persons who conduct the work 
within the barn of an ordinary - sized water- 
power thrashing- mill, the man feeds the corn 
into the mill, two women supply him with 
loosened sheaves, two women riddle the corn 
and attend to the chaff in the corn-barn, and 
the remaining two women fork up and build the 
straw in the straw-barn. All these workers are 
required for the performing of good work with 
a powerful mill; and an eighth person is needed 
to drive the horse in a horse-power machine. So 
few as three persons are employed in many a 
barn,—the man to feed the machine, a woman 
to supply him with sheaves, and a woman to do 
the work of the corn-barn; but though these 
may go through the task in a slovenly manner, 
they cannot possibly give due attention to the 
working of a well-driven six-horse power thrash- 
ing-machine. | 
The feeding and managing of the thrashing- 
machine are the most onerous part of the work, 
but cannot be properly understood without a 
knowledge of the machine’s structure and mode 
of operation, and will be noticed in the article 
Turasuine. The work of the corn-barn is sim- 
ultaneous with that of the upper barn. One 
hopper in the winnowing-machine sends down 
to the floor of the barn the good grain, with an 
admixture of the heavier kinds of foreign sub- 
stances; and another hopper sends down the 
light corn, the heavier parts of the chaff, ears of 
corn which have been broken off and partly 
thrashed, and the larger parts of weeds. The 
good grain is hand-riddled into a heap at a con- 
venient part of the barn; it is afterwards kept 
free from all chaff, straws, and larger refuse; 
and the tails or lower portions of the heap are 
re-riddled before being shovelled up to the top. 
The refuse of the riddlings is added to the mat- 
ters sent down by the second hopper; and all 
these together are called roughs or shag, and 
are variously treated according to the nature 
and condition of the grain. The roughs of bar- 
ley are all reserved for the peculiar process of 
hummeling; and the roughs of oats and wheat 
are subjected to thorough hand-riddling in the 
same manner as the disgorgements of the first 
hopper. The refuse of the ordinary roughs of 
oats may be thrown into a heap, to be used as 
fodder ; and the refuse of the roughs of wheat 
or of badly thrashed oats are collected upon a 
chaff-sheet, and carried up to be re-thrashed. 
But in some thrashing-mills, an apparatus of 
buckets revolves with the machinery, and car- 
ries up all the roughs from the spout of the se- 
cond hopper to be re-thrashed; and, in such 
cases, only one riddler, instead of two, is required 
| in the corn-barn. 
The chaff, during the process of thrashing, is 
| thrown into an apartment by itself; and this 
ought to be thoroughly partitioned from the 
|, corn-barn, to prevent the communication from 
it of clouds of dust. The riddlers of the grain 
BARN MANAGEMENT. 
look, from time to time, through a convenient 
opening into the chaff-apartment, to observe 
when the chaff makes a great accumulation at 
the end of the winnowing-machine, and to re- 
move it thence into the interior.—The straw, as 
it passes from the machinery into the straw-barn, 
is forked by the workers into a mass, and built 
up and tramped in the manner of stacking hay. 
In some instances, the straw slides down a rack 
from the shaker of the mill; and any corn or 
chaff which it may have swept along with it falls 
through the rack. The corn is more readily se- 
parated when the straw passes under, than when 
it passes over, the shaker of the mill. 
A process of winnowing and cleaning follows 
the thrashing and winnowing process; it is, in 
most cases, all performed by hand in the corn- 
barn ; and, in these cases, to correspond with the 
scale of labour which we have described, it re- 
quires four women anda man. But, in some in- 
stances, a second winnowing-machine is placed 
below the first, in connexion with the thrashing- 
mill, and is made to serve all the purposes of 
thorough or final winnowing; and, in others, a 
second is placed on the same level as the first, | 
but also in connexion with the thrashing-mill, 
and receives the grain after it has been riddled 
by the hand on a roller of canvass. The latter of | 
these contrivances is the better of the two, as it 
permits the riddling to occur between the two 
winnowings, and in general brings the grain into 
such a clean condition as to be fit for immediate 
storing in the sacks. Yet even when either of 
the contrivances works with the utmost possible 
efficiency, a hand winnowing~- machine is fre- 
quently desirable, or all but indispensable, for 
performing occasional pieces of work, of much 
importance to the farmer, but too small in 
amount to repay the cost and trouble of setting 
on the mill-power. Hence, by far the most gen- 
eral practice is to effect the second winnowing 
in the corn-barn, by means of a hand winnowing- 
machine. 
When no chain of buckets is attached to the 
thrashing-mill to carry away the riddled roughs, 
these are passed through the hand-winnowing 
machine; and, in order that the chaff which they 
contain may not pollute the barn, but may be 
blown away, the end of the machine is placed so 
as to project out of the barn-door. The roughs 
are fed by the hand through the hopper; and the 
grain, if passably clean, is riddled upon the heap 
of good grain,—but if not pretty clean, is riddled 
into a heap by itself, to be subjected to another 
winnowing. ‘The barn-man drives the machine ; 
one of the women feeds the grain through the 
hopper with a wecht; another takes away the 
corn, wechtful by wechtful, from the machine; 
and the two others stand at a little distance, re- 
ceive each into a riddle one-half of every wecht- 
ful of the corn, and riddle it together upon a 
heap. The machine is regulated according to 
the condition and quality of the grain; the hind- 
