Fig. 41—Cross-section.
This barn is forty-four feet long by thirty-four feet wide, and is built in four “bays” of eleven feet in length each. The main floor is twelve feet wide, and hay wagons drive in at either end and out at the other. The cow stalls occupy all of the linter on the south side, a door at the end opening into the lane to the pasture. The first bay on the north side is ceiled up with tongued and grooved boards, has a tight floor overhead, and is used as a grain storeroom; the other three bays on that side are hay mows from floor to roof.
Over the main floor and fifteen feet above it is a floor for hay, or corn, or used for general storage at different seasons. There was no floor on the collar-beams when the present owner bought the farm. Strong poles had been laid across the space and surplus hay thrown on them; since being floored over the owner says it is the best part of the barn, and invaluable for drying out crops not fully cured. A basement about six feet in depth receives the manure from the cows, and three or four logs have the run of the cellar and manure heaps, thoroughly rotting and “fining” the manure for the next season’s crops.
The frame of this barn is of eight-inch square hemlock timber, the braces three by four inch hemlock mortised into posts and stringers, the floor stringers three by nine inches, two feet apart and well cross-bridged, the floor of three-inch plank. The scaffold floor is of inch boards laid on two by six inch stringers three feet apart, and is amply strong for any load put upon it.
Grain bins along two sides of the grain room may be four feet wide, and, fitted with drop fronts may be five feet high and divided into two or more compartments. Two small bins may be fitted in each side of the window; the window may be in the end if preferred.
A COMPLETE DAIRY BARN
Fig. 42—A complete dairy barn, with silo.
Modern dairy farming means an up-to-date dairy barn, and we give herewith the plans of one which is warmly endorsed by the owner and carries fifty cows in perfect comfort. This is a truss-frame barn, ninety-three feet long by forty feet wide, the basement (or ground) floor being wholly occupied by cow stalls and calving pens, the main floor being a hay-storage room. Two bays on one side are used for grain storage, all the remainder of the bays on both sides being for hay; a drive-way fifteen feet wide extends through this floor, and inclined driveways at each end give access from the fields in either direction.