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HISTORIAN’S CORNER
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From "200 Years of the Town of Phelps"
PHELPS HISTORY
Garages, Granaries & Other Evolutions
By Don Tiffany
There seems to be no comparison between a rustic log cabin of 200 to 250 years ago and a ranch style home of the 1950s and 1960s or even the modern, extravagant homes being built today in the 21st century. The advance of technology, the increase of wealth, the changes in the needs, and the styles and fads of each succeeding generation brought about the unique uses of their homes and other buildings during each era of this country's development.
The pioneer settler's log cabin was built for practicality. It was a one-room domicile for several reasons; first, time - a building had to be built as soon as possible to protect the family from the elements; second, necessity - labor was scarce on the frontier so the early cabin was built small to save labor, also it was easier to keep warm; third, economics - most of these early settlers came to improve their lives by literally pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and to build something from nothing. They came, for the most part with little furniture or other household goods and little or no money. They were to depend on their skills to build and survive in unforgiving surroundings, both natural and social. So, small was the immediate answer.
Politicians in the 19th century bragged that they were born in log cabins, overcame adversity and hard times and went on to become the famous men they claimed to be. Modern office seekers still claim the same attributes without the log cabins.
Log cabins had one room that served as kitchen, dining area, living quarters, bedroom, and in some instances, a place for farm animals. As children came along a sleeping loft may have been built directly under the roof. A log barn had to be put up for the safety of the animals and a place to store hay and grain. If the family was successful during the following years the house and barn were replaced by larger buildings built with sawed lumber and shingled roofs and other outbuildings were added to aid in the operation of the farm. Special buildings to house chickens or pigs and larger ones for horses and cows were added to the complex.
The farm building we are most familiar with today is the barn. The one style most common in our area, built in the 1800s, is called the English Bank Barn or Threshing Barn. They are so common that we take them for granted but upon close observation, we see many of them falling down, covered over with vines or simply bare stone walls left as tombstones to remind us of their existence. The English Bank Barn is so called because its design was familiar to the early settlers from the British Isles. If the topography was favorable the building was erected on sloping ground so the main entrance to the barn was reached by a ramp on the high side of the slope. This made it easy to carry in the hay and grain to be stored on the upper, main floor. The larger animals, horses and cows were housed in the lower floor, which was made by the foundation walls. The lower floor was accessible from the down side of the original slope.
The name Threshing Barn comes from the way it was built and what it was used for. There were usually two doors located in the front and back sides of the center of the long sides of the barn. They opened on a tight, wooden-planked floor that ran between the doors. The sides of this "driveway" were also covered with boards, some 24" wide, to a height of 4'. The harvested sheaves of grain were threshed on the floor with flails. The straw, hulls and kernels were then tossed in the air. The doors on the opposite sides allowed the breeze to blow through and it separated the chaff and straw from the heavier grain "berries". The grain kernels were then scooped up and put in bags or placed directly into a granary located just off the side of the threshing floor. The bays located on the ends of the barn (on either side of the threshing floor) were used to store hay for the winter or grain bundles for threshing.
The English Bank/Threshing Barn was a practical, time-proven building and was used, even with advances in farming technology, until the 1950s. Flails gave way to threshing machines. These machines were pushed through the upper bank door onto the drive floor. Both doors were opened. The bundles of grain were brought to the threshing machine, the grain was separated and bagged and the straw was blown out the opposite door into the barnyard onto a straw stack. Barn granaries still saw limited use into the mid-20th century but with combines replacing grain separators, most grains were stored in steel bins located elsewhere on the farm or trucked to feed mills for storage. The hay was now baled but still stored in the old haymows.
Modern farming methods have relegated the venerable, time-tested, practical old barns to the ignominious use of storage sheds or worse, oblivion. Anyone driving around our countryside can see the demise of these once valuable old buildings. There are many ways a barn can die. Observe an old farm house, newly sided with a good roof and surrounded by a manicured yard and well-tended flower garden but just behind the house sits a barn whose roof is sagging or worse yet, full of holes or fallen in. The doors are gone or hanging awry. Weeds and scrub trees barely hide the stuff crammed inside waiting, like the barn, to be discarded or to rot away. A grove of trees, a lilac bush, a cellar hole or a driveway show where a farmhouse (probably destroyed by a fire) once stood near the road and, farther back stands an empty barn, stark against the sky, waiting for nature to takes its course.
Still, there are some old barns that have been carefully restored, painted, and re-roofed. Others have been incorporated into the complex of pole barns and specialized buildings but have lost their distinctive character.
The springhouse with its cooling spring water was replaced by the milkhouse with its electrically operated cooler filled with milk cans. The milkhouse, in turn, has been replaced by a milking parlor that can pump hundreds of gallons of milk to a huge chilled milk tank holding thousands of gallons of milk. The round tall silo is a product of 20th century farming methods. These tall cylindrical structures are easily seen against the rural skyline. They grew from about 8' in diameter to more than double that size with the use of powered silo-unloaders - a man could not throw ensilage from the far side of the silo to the down chute in the larger silos unless he handled it twice. These silos were built of many materials. Wooded vertical slats held together by steel hoops, special fitted concrete blocks held together by the same type of hoops, and some of metal panels bolted together. One that stood on the old Babcock Farm (now Donnelly's) was built of the same glazed brick used to build the Kraut Factory on Eagle Street. These silos are also disappearing from our landscape because of the modern trench silo being used today. The trench silo holds much more tonnage and can be filled more quickly and economically than its predecessor.
The huge egg factories holding thousands of chicken can produce eggs at a fraction of the cost of earlier methods. A few small chicken houses can still be seen occasionally. A small 8' X 12' building with a shed roof facing south. The only windows are the on the south for warmth in winter, or to be opened in the summer for cooling. Inside, the next boxes (where the hens lay their eggs) are on the south wall under the windows and the bars for the roost are on the north side. The pigpen, usually located away from the other buildings, was a low building with a pig trough along the side. During the cold season the pigs could keep warm inside, with the help of straw bedding, and cool outside during the hot days of summer with the aid of a watered mud hole. Now, modern hog factories produce pork by the ton in huge buildings cooled by fans in the summer and closed up in the winter.
Other buildings once deemed necessary but no longer needed are the summer kitchen and the icehouse. Many of the larger farmsteads had a summer kitchen that was built away from the house proper. It was named so because its use kept the heat of cooking out of the main house during the hot months. If a farm had a pond the farmer could cut his own ice and store it in his own icehouse for summer use. There are still some ice houses in existence on a few farms but are used for other purposes today.
Other rooms and buildings had common usages in both village and country homes. Originally homes were heated with wood thus requiring a woodshed to keep the firewood dry. Most woodsheds were simply added to the rear or side of a house. Some of these low sheds were eventually converted to coal bins when this more efficient source of heat became readily available; although most coal bins were relegated to the cellar where coal was delivered by a coal chute through a cellar window. Being taken to the woodshed for corrective punishment is only a memory, as are most woodsheds.
Most early automobile owners at the beginning of the 20th century took great pride in their new, unique status symbols. Part of the care of these machines required protection from the elements. However no readymade buildings were available. As the car replaced the horse and buggy so too the carriage house became the house for the car. The French seemed to be able to come up with new names for the car culture such as limousine, coupe and, most importantly, garage. Thus the car house became known as a garage. An unused shed or the stables where the horses were originally kept became the first garages. Some had to have the doors widened or raised or the back wall extended to accept the engine, hood and front end of the auto. Later houses had a garage next to the house connected by a "breezeway", and then even later, attached garages were part of new house construction. Now the latest homes have garages with two, three, or even four bays with overhead doors with automatic openers so the driver doesn't have to get out in inclement weather. Ironically at some homes the cars are still parked in the driveway because the garage is filled with boats, snowblowers, lawnmowers, garbage cans, rakes, shovels, freezers and other miscellaneous household items!
Big deep porches surrounded the fronts and sides of homes 70 to 100 years ago. Kids could play outside in the summer even on rainy days. The adults could cool off and relax on a summers evening and talk with neighbors walking by. The porches have been replaced by decks and patios built mostly on the rear of modern houses. No more talking with the neighbors (they're out on their decks or riding in their air-conditioned cars on those hot summer days) and the kids don't play outside when it rains.
Years ago the front parlor was closed to everyone unless there was a funeral, a wedding or other very special occasion requiring its use. The back parlor, or living room, was where the family gathered during the course of everyday living. Some wives, both rural and urban, took pride in having a large kitchen where most common social functions took place. Friends, close relatives and good neighbors gathered for coffee, conversation and catching up around the kitchen table that was always accessible by the back door. I have seen a sign that said, "BACK DOOR FRIENDS ARE THE BEST" that probably still holds true today.
All the barns, pantries, porches, parlors, summer kitchens, woodsheds, coal bins, root cellars and other special places used in everyday living in years past can bring memorable recollections, both good and bad, to the people who used them in their daily lives. While there is much to be said for the amenities of modern life, some of the quiet, unhurried ways of yesterdays' living gave a different spice and flavor that are missing in today's electronic, fast-paced society.
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