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, 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.
DESIGN IV.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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