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Farm House 3 Miscellaneous

Scary Books: Scottish Ghost Stories

It may be an objection in the minds of some persons to the various plans here submitted, that we have connected the out-buildings immediately with the offices of the dwelling itself. We are well aware that such is not always usual; but many years observation have convinced us, that in their use and occupation, such connection is altogether the most convenient and economical. The only drawback is in the case of fire; which, if it occur in any one building, the whole establishment is liable to be
onsumed. This objection is conceded; but we take it, that it is the business of every one not able to be his own insurer, to have his buildings insured by others; and the additional cost of this insurance is not a tithe of what the extra expense of time, labor, and exposure is caused to the family by having the out-buildings disconnected, and at a fire-proof distance from each other. There has, too, in the separation of these out-buildings, (we do not now speak of barns, and houses for the stock, and the farmwork proper,) from the main dwelling, crept into the construction of such dwellings, by modern builders, some things, which in a country establishment, particularly, ought never to be there, such as privies, or water-closets, as they are more genteelly called. These last, in our estimation, have no business in a farmer's house. They are an effeminacy, only, and introduced by city life. An appendage they should be, but separated to some distance from the living rooms, and accessible by sheltered 112 passages to them. The wood-house should adjoin the outer kitchen, because the fuel should always be handy, and the outer kitchen, or wash-room is a sort of slop-room, of necessity; and the night wood, and that for the morning fires may be deposited in it for immediate use. The workshop, and small tool-house naturally comes next to that, as being chiefly used in stormy weather. Next to this last, would, more conveniently, come the carriage or wagon-house, and of course a stable for a horse or two for family use, always accessible at night, and convenient at unseasonable hours for farm labor. In the same close neighborhood, also, should be a small pigsty, to accommodate a pig or two, to eat up the kitchen slops from the table, refuse vegetables, parings, dishwater, &c., &c., which could not well be carried to the main piggery of the farm, unless the old-fashioned filthy mode of letting the hogs run in the road, and a trough set outside the door-yard fence, as seen in some parts of the country, were adopted. A pig can always be kept, and fatted in three or four months, from the wash of the house, with a little grain, in any well-regulated farmer's family. A few fowls may also be kept in a convenient hen-house, if desired, without offence—all constituting a part of the household economy of the place.



These out-buildings too, give a comfortable, domestic look to the whole concern. Each one shelters and protects the other, and gives an air of comfort and repose to the whole—a family expression all round. What so naked and chilling to the feelings, as to see a country dwelling-house all perked up, by itself, 113 standing, literally, out of doors, without any dependencies about it? No, no. First should stand the house, the chief structure, in the foreground; appendant to that, the kitchen wing; next in grade, the wood-house; covering in, also, the minor offices of the house. Then by way of setting up, partially on their own account, should come the workshop, carriage-house, and stable, as practically having a separate character, but still subordinate to the house and its requirements; and these too, may have their piggery and hen-house, by way of tapering off to the adjoining fence, which encloses a kitchen garden, or family orchard. Thus, each structure is appropriate in its way—and together, they form a combination grateful to the sight, as a complete rural picture. All objections, on account of filth or vermin, to this connection, may be removed by a cleanly keeping of the premises—a removal of all offal immediately as it is made, and daily or weekly taking it on to the manure heaps of the barns, or depositing it at once on the grounds where it is required. In point of health, nothing is more congenial to sound physical condition than the occasional smell of a stable, or the breath of a cow, not within the immediate contiguity to the occupied rooms of the dwelling. On the score of neatness, therefore, as we have placed them, no bar can be raised to their adoption.



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