Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in italics has been transcribed between _underscores_,
bold face text between =equal signs=, and blackletter text between
~tildes~. Small capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this e-text.
~The Rural Science Series~
EDITED BY L. H. BAILEY
THE FARMSTEAD
[Illustration]
THE FARMSTEAD
_THE MAKING OF THE RURAL HOME AND
THE LAY-OUT OF THE FARM_
BY
ISAAC PHILLIPS ROBERTS
Director of the College of Agriculture and Professor of Agriculture in
Cornell University; author of “The Fertility of the Land”
_FIFTH EDITION_
~New York~
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1910
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1900
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped January, 1900
Reprinted August, 1902; January, 1905;
August, 1907; June, 1910
~Mount Pleasant Press~
J. Horace McFarland Company
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGES
I. RURAL HOMES 1-11
II. THE FARM AS A SOURCE OF INCOME 12-42
III. EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY ON THE FARM 43-53
IV. SELECTION AND PURCHASE OF FARMS 54-64
V. THE RELATION OF THE FARMER TO THE LAWYER (_By Hon.
DeForest VanVleet_) 65-73
VI. LOCATING THE HOUSE 74-86
VII. PLANNING RURAL BUILDINGS 87-131
VIII. BUILDING THE HOUSE--GENERAL LAY-OUT 132-157
Building the Foundations 138
Wooden Houses--The Frame 142
IX. BUILDING THE HOUSE, CONCLUDED--OUTSIDE COVERING,
PAINTING 158-180
Veneered Houses 168
Old Houses 170
Painting the House 173
X. INSIDE FINISH, HEATING, AND VENTILATION 181-192
Heating and Ventilation 190
XI. HOUSE FURNISHING AND DECORATION (_By Professor Mary
Roberts Smith_) 193-203
XII. CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION--WATER SUPPLY AND SEWAGE
(_By Professor Mary Roberts Smith_) 204-223
Water Supply and Sewage 217
XIII. HOUSEHOLD ADMINISTRATION, ECONOMY, AND COMFORT (_By
Professor Mary Roberts Smith_) 224-236
XIV. THE HOME YARD (_By Professor L. H. Bailey_) 237-248
XV. A DISCUSSION OF BARNS 249-265
Location 255
Planning the Barn 259
Water Supply 261
XVI. BUILDING THE BARN--THE BASEMENT 266-287
Excavation 268
Walls 271
Floors 277
Stalls 280
Mangers and Ties 285
XVII. BUILDING THE BARN--THE SUPERSTRUCTURE 288-297
XVIII. REMODELING OLD BARNS 298-305
XIX. OUTBUILDINGS AND ACCESSORIES 306-320
Poultry Houses 306
Piggeries 311
The Silo 316
XX. LIGHTNING PROTECTION (_By H. H. Norris, M.E._) 321-335
Metal Roofs 324
Protecting Wooden Roofs 326
XXI. THE FIELDS 336-345
Fences 336
Orchards 340
Farm Garden 341
INDEX 346
THE FARMSTEAD
CHAPTER I
_RURAL HOMES_
Man is made partly by heredity, partly by environment; both may be
controlled and modified to a far greater extent than is generally
supposed. In speaking of farm life, its disadvantages are frequently
emphasized, while its possible advantages as an environment for the
development of the finest quality of human nature are as often ignored
or overlooked.
Nature, with her ever-varying form and color, beauty and symmetry, is
forgotten in the city; the shady forest, the meadow brook, the waving
fields, are unknown. There, instead, is incessant noise, the clang and
clash of trade, towering and ugly buildings, skies darkened by the smoke
of factories, children who never saw a tree or played elsewhere than
upon a hard and filthy pavement; and worst of all is the
nerve-destroying haste and unequal competition, wearing out body and
soul. In rural life, however tame and lonely, the home is not merely a
few square feet hedged in by brick walls, but the whole wide
countryside: the barns, the fields, the woods, the orchards, the animals
wild and domesticated, the outlook over hill and valley--these all
constitute the farmer’s home.
The manufacturer locates his factory in some by-street or suburb where
land is cheap, and as far as possible from the residence part of the
city; his home is far removed from these unsightly surroundings. But the
farmer must live within a few hundred feet of his barns and
outbuildings, and if these be ugly and dirty, the beauty and comfort of
the home are sadly marred. If the farmer, then, has the whole landscape
as a background for his home, he must on the other hand modify his
immediate surroundings so as to overcome their almost inevitable
unsightliness.
Besides the ever-present beauties of nature, country life has certain
other advantages over the city: it is the place to develop the strong
health-physique. The luxury of rich and populous communities tends to
produce puny and enervated citizens; the excessive toil, bad air,
limited space and scant food of the poor tend to degrade and destroy
body and soul; but the comfortable simplicity, space, air, sunlight and
abundant food of the open country give opportunity for the finest
development of the human animal. It is true that even on the farm there
are sometimes overwork and privation; but, at the worst, these cannot be
so severe as in cities so long as the sun shines, the wind blows, and
green things grow for the worker out of doors. Here the child may be
born right and nourished by pure food and air. It is surrounded by
animals whose life and motion become an incentive to action, and who
become its companions without danger of moral contamination. The lamb,
the calf, the colt, are far safer playmates than the city urchin
precociously wise in evil ways.
Professor Amos G. Warner says that “children reared in institutions are
much below par because they lack the power of initiative.” The farm
child has an incessant, varied and unconscious training of the eye, the
hand, and the mind. While he is developing strength, symmetry, courage,
the mental is being coördinated with the physical. The hand is made to
obey the will, while the fact that the handicraft is made useful lends
charm and delight to the work. The city child must try to learn, by a
course of manual training in some public school, what the country child
picks up unconsciously in the natural process of play and work.
After half a century, I look back to one of the happiest moments of my
life, when I presented my mother with a dove-tailed wooden flower box,
painted bright red. That flower box first taught me how to make wood
take the form desired. While the flower box has long since rotted, the
board-runner sled smashed, the water wheel broken, and the boat lies
rotten in the bottom of the lake, the time spent upon them was not
thrown away, for they gave me the inspiration and power to “boss” wood,
and this power has served me well in many an emergency.
As knowledge begins to dominate the hand and train it to change the form
and character of things, certain physical laws are discovered. If the
sail is made too large or the boat too narrow, a cold bath is the
result. If the sled runners are too short and rough, the school-mate
arrives at the bottom of the hill first. No schoolmaster was needed, for
when one of these natural laws was broken or ignored, the penalty
followed quickly and with full force. So, in a thousand ways, the youth
is taught respect for the laws which govern matter. All this leads the
youth on the farm, if full play and direction are given, to investigate
everything in sight, to discover that there are other than physical
laws. The higher laws puzzle him greatly, give him much concern, lead
to doubts, for they are too abstract and too far-reaching for his
youthful comprehension. The physical laws have been found by experience
to be ever true and stable, and the youth cannot but believe that moral
and spiritual laws are equally so. This is the sheet anchor which holds
him to belief in them, however imperfectly he may understand them. He is
anxious to investigate, even to experiment along these lines, but is
disappointed because the results cannot be set down in pounds or feet or
units of energy. If here on the farm the mental and physical have been
kept healthy and active, the moral and spiritual will develop as
naturally as the fruit from the blossom. The development of spiritual
fruit to high perfection is slow, because the power to think and reason
correctly and abstractly comes only with age, experience and mental
development.
But the greatest advantage of country life lies in the opportunity for
the promotion of healthy family relations. Parents naturally find their
chief happiness in the education and development of their children; and
in time the children stimulate the parents. The sharing of common labors
from babyhood up, the working together for common interests and
ambition, which farm life especially entails, produce the most
wholesome family relations. The most valuable part of any person’s
education is really in the home. To “help father and mother” becomes the
keynote of a child’s life, and unselfish, willing service is the first
and last and best lesson of morality and religion. The pride in honest
and capable ancestors, the natural and wholesome ambition for the future
of the children, fill up a measure of contentment difficult to find
elsewhere. In such a family there need be nothing to conceal; life takes
on dignity in place of affectation, honesty instead of sham; it has
simplicity, pure affections, fidelity. Artificial sex distinctions
disappear; men and women may do that which is needful and human, the
woman in the field, the man in the house, if desirable, sharing their
common, healthful activities.
All this is very well, some will say, but how shall such a home be
maintained on the income of the farm? “Farming doesn’t pay.” This
statement is unverified, and, carrying on its face, as it does, a little
truth, is misleading. Does farming pay? Does anything pay? What is pay?
All depends upon how you value the currency in which the pay is
received. Is “wisdom better than rubies?” Are the sayings of the wisest
and best of men true? “Give me neither riches nor poverty. Get wisdom,
get understanding. Take fast hold of instruction.”
A modern thinker, Professor L. H. Bailey, in the report of the Secretary
of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture, 1898, puts it in this wise:
“But there is another cause of apprehension which I ought to mention,
perhaps founded upon the probable tendencies of our sociological and
economic conditions, especially as they apply to rural communities.
There is a tendency towards a division of estates as population
increases, and the profits of farming are often so small that educated
tastes, it is thought, cannot be satisfied on the farm. There are those
who believe that because of these two facts we are ourselves drifting
towards an American peasantry. Let us take the second proposition
first,--that the profits of farming are so small that educated tastes
cannot be satisfied and gratified on the farm. Now I grant this to be
true if the measure of the satisfaction of an educated taste is money;
but I deny it most strenuously if the satisfaction of an educated taste
lies in a purer and better life. We must make this distinction very deep
and broad, for it is a fundamental one. I believe we have made a mistake
in teaching agriculture, during the last few years, by putting the
emphasis on the money we make out of it. I do not believe that people
are to become wealthy on the farm, as a few do in manufacturing; I
should not hold out that hope to men. There are certain men here and
there who have great executive ability, who see the strategic points and
take advantage of them, who can make a success of farming the same as
they would at the making of shoes, or harnesses, or buttons, or anything
else. But as a general thing, the farmer should be taught that the farm
is not the place to become wealthy. I do not believe it is. Certainly I
should not go on the farm with that idea in view. But if I wanted to
live a happy life, if I wanted to have at my command independence and
the comforts of living, I do not know where I could better find them
than on the farm; for those very things which appeal to an educated
taste are the things which the farmer does not have to buy,--they are
the things which are his already.”
The wealthy few of the cities give voice to the thought that the farming
classes in the United States are always on the verge of poverty, yet in
the last century they have rescued from barbarism and solitude nearly
all of the arable land of the two billion acres of which the United
States are composed. More than four million five hundred thousand farm
homes have been planted, valued at more than thirteen billion dollars.
Much hue and cry has been raised of late about farm mortgages. If the
facts were known, it is more than probable that the farmers, as a
whole, have assets in mortgages, promissory notes and savings banks
amply sufficient to liquidate all such outstanding obligations. Added to
the real estate, the farmers own implements and machines valued at five
hundred millions of dollars, and their live stock, upon ten thousand
hills, numbers one hundred and seventy-five millions, valued at more
than two billions of dollars, while the annual value of the farm
products is between two and three billions of dollars. It should be
remembered that these values are nominal, the true value being in most
cases more than double these amounts. The farmers are not now in danger
of becoming paupers. From the farms come more than half of the college
students. At the present time it is probable that the income of the
farmers exceeds three billion dollars annually. When it is considered
that there is little or no direct outgo for rent of house, and that
nearly three-fourths of the food is produced at home, and that these
items are seldom taken into account in the statistics of income, it
appears that the farmer’s real income is much larger than is usually
estimated in money. In other words, a five hundred dollar net income on
the farm, under the conditions which now prevail, provides for a more
comfortable living than does a thousand dollars in the city.
But these results of the labors of the farmer as set forth in figures,
tell but half the story, for nothing is said in these census reports of
an empire redeemed, of the thousands upon thousands of miles of road
constructed, of rivers spanned, of the school house by every roadside,
or of the church spires which mark the progress of agriculture and
civilization in countryside, in village and in hamlet. The census report
does not give the number or value of the great men and noble women which
the rural homes have produced, though they are the most valuable product
of the farms. It says nothing about the perennial rural springs from
which flow, in a never-ending stream, statesmen, divines, missionaries,
teachers, students and business men. Although more than half of these
life-giving energies of the nation and civilization come directly from
the rural homes, the census report gives no clue by which the value of
these, the nation’s wealth and power, can be ascertained.
Looking over all the trades and professions which are followed by
civilized and barbarous peoples, none give opportunity for rearing the
family under so nearly ideal conditions as does the profession of
agriculture: none furnish such good conditions for rearing children and
for developing them into strong, natural and useful men and women. Here,
then, on these broad acres of America, under the flag which we love, we
are to help transform the rude surroundings of the pioneer and the
slovenly homes of the careless into pure and beautiful nurseries of
American citizenship. Having shown, in part, what a rural life has to
offer to those who are trained to appreciate the beauties of nature and
to obey her laws, and having shown that the average farmer always has an
assured though modest income, and that the better farmers have an ample
income for maintaining improved rural homes, the further discussion of
how they may be made to minister to the natural longings for broader and
more refined lives may be taken up.