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Show HAY BARRACKS. How to Erect a Cheap Substantial Shelter and Fill It by Bone Power. A Michigan farmer who lost considerable consider-able hay by stacking it out of doors put up a hay barrack. This is how he did it, as told in The Rural New Yorker, with the aid of the cuts here reproduced. He says: I had seen barracks, but none suited because of the hard labor to rill them, We had used a haycar and horse hayfork in the barn for several years and bated FIO. I A MICHIGAN HAY BARRACK, to go back to the old style of hand pitching. pitch-ing. I drew several plans. The one that suited me best was speedily erected, and is shown in the illustration, Fig. 1. Only the end of the barrack was photographed, photo-graphed, including the projecting track over the place of unloading. A diagram or plan of this end is also given to show the frame and manner of erection. See Fig. 2. The posts are all white oak, about ten inches in diameter at the base and from . eighteen to twenty-eight feet long. Those outside are sixteen feet high to the eaves and the ridge is twenty-four feet from the ground. The barrack is' sixteen feet wide. It can be made of any length desired and one or more "bents" can be added to it at any time. It stands on nearly level ground and is located in a convenient position, back of the granary and'toolhouse. I laid out the foundation by setting stakes at each of the four outside corners, and then ran a line from stake to stake. This line was leveled and a hole two feet deep was dug at the lowest outside corner. cor-ner. All the other holes were measured fa""--'-' 11 ; ,r -- Tictly eighteen fijet long. Two posts Were Crst placed in position on the ground with their lower ends (B, Fig. 2) over the two end holes. A 2 by 8 hard wood girt (C C) sixteen -feet Ibng was spiked on two feet below the upper ends f the posts. Temporary brace3 were tacked across and each bent was raised by ropes and pulleys.. Additional braces were nailed across' after the posts had been brought into lino and made plumb, and now the hardest job was al hand.' Upon climbing climb-ing to the top of the frame we found that not one of the ten outside posts was half an inch higher than the others. The 2 by 6 plates (D D) were spiked on the outside out-side of the posts, theupper edges being about nine inches below the tops. The rafters (E E) were allowed to rest on the plates and were also spiked to the posts. Each pair of rafters was set up with the ridge spread two inches apart to receive tho ridge board. In order to do this cleats were tacked on each pair before they were raised into position. After the rafters had been spiked on the posts they were braced into position and ribs nailed in between them to stiffen them and also to support tho roof boards. The ridge board was next placed in position and extended ex-tended to the pole at the right of the picture. pic-ture. Tho cleats were then knocked off and the rafters spiked to the ridge boards. The roof hoards project three feet beyond the plates anil the reof is FIO. n CONSTRUCTION OF A. HAT BARRACK. BAR-RACK. half pitch. The boards are creased on each edge and shed water nearly as well as a shingle roof. The track is suspended from the ridge board by double hanger hooks, .so as to allow free vibrition. The roof is well braced. The frame is all nailed together with No. 20 wire spikes. At the back end of the barracks a post stands in the middle of the last bent and extends to the ridge board, to which it is also spiked. In filling with hay, each section between be-tween two bents is filled at one time, beginning be-ginning at the back end. The. picture shows the first bent empty, and in taking tak-ing out hay the wagon is backed into this space to load. This arrangement saves much hard work. The track and car are so arranged that the horse hayfork hay-fork can be used to take out the hay if desired. After filling it up well under the roof we let the hay settle and put in more on top. The back end gable faces the west and is boarded up. We may inclose it next season, but see no necessity neces-sity for doing so at this date. I lost enough hay in stacks one year to jay all it cost for material and erection. Three of us got the material together and put it up in two days, at a cost of about $18.50. As our barn space ia limited, we think of erecting a barrack next season for stacking wheat. The report of the secretary of the Iowa state board of agriculture shows the total value of the products of Iowa soil for 1891 to be $449,897,605. Of this amount over 4100.000.000 is for " |
