Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/387

 MODEL DESIGNS FOR 1-AllM HOUSES. 363 rous others in the neighbourhood of Vienna, which no doubt are familiar to many of our readers. By a third arrangement, one of the milk-rooms might be made a dairy ; the otlier milk-room a wine and ale cellar, and the lobby a drinking-room. The appearance of such a construction, to whatever use it may be applied, when covered with green turf, need not be disagreeable ; we have given the architectural parts something of an Egyptian character, as may be seen in the elevation of the end, iig. 744 ; of one side, fig. 745 ; and in the perspective view, fig. 746. 732. I'he Cheesepress-room may be very properly placed between the dairy and the dairy scullery. It should be surrounded by shelves, and the presses may stand in the nviddle of the floor. Tiie shelves should be grooved across, with a small gutter suspended in front, to collect from the grooves the whey which runs from new cheeses, for a day or two atler they are taken out of the press, and before they are carried up into the cheese- room. Tliese gutters may deliver their contents into one upright pipe, communicating with the pig tank. As a' good deal of whey will also run from the cheeses while in the I)resses, grooves may also be formed along the floor communicating with the same pipe. 733. The Cheese-room may be over the cheesepress-room, the dairy, and dairy scullery. There should be windows on opposite sides of this room, for tliorough ventilation ; and tJiese windows should have outside wire shutters, to exclude flies and vermin, and yet admit a free circulation of air. The best position for the shelves is in the middle of the r(X)m, so that the cheese may have air on all sides. The shelves should be of the breadth of the cheese intended to be made, and should be perfectly smooth and level. They may be supported from the floor, or, if danger from mice be anticipated, suspended from the ceiling by iron rods. 734. A Dryiny-shed is a useful appendage to the back kitchen, dairy scullery, wash- liouse, and even brewery. It is useful not only for drying every description of wooden vessel, but even clothes, leaves, such as those of tobacco, ears of maize, garden seeds, &c. In old English farm-houses, the penthouse, or far-projecting eaves, supplied the place of this appendage; and in Switzerland the galleries answer the same purpose; but AN'aistell, by far the best Britisli writer on farm buildings, as Morel- Vinde is by far the best of the French writers on the same subject, recommends that a drying-shed should be built on puqiose. We are decidedly of the same opinion, unless verandas connecting the difftjrent parts of farm ofliccs, and forming covered passages between them, can be made to serve the same end. 735. 77ie Cider-house, on a small farm, where cider is not made for sale, may be dispensed with, and the apples ground in the churning-rooni, or in any room or shed wnere steam or horse power can be applied to turning the grinding rollers. On large cider farms, the cider-house requires to be of considerable size, for holding the fi^uit before and after it is ground, and for holding the rollers or mill for grinding it, and the press. In Worcestershire the dimensions of the best cider-slieds are twenty-four feet in length by twenty in breadth. The rollers are turned by horse power, communicated by a gin wheel operating on a pinion on the end of a horizontal shaft, in a similar manner to what takes place in a horse churning or washing machine. The cider-house is occasionally open on one or more sides, and the liquor, after being expressed from the pulp, is cai-ried in pails to the cider-cellar, which is commonly under the dwelling-house ; but a better mode would be, to have a cellar under the cider-house, and to let down the liquor into the casks by pipes, in the manner suggested for the brewery, § 728. The floor ought to have an inclination to a trap at one corner, in order that it may be easily washed ; and this trap ought to communicate with the manure tank. A second trap and pipe should lead to the pig's food tank, to poiu- down it such liquor as may not be fit for luitting in the casks. 736. An Ice-house for a farm house may be considered a superfluous appendage in Britain, but it is common on the farms in America, and therefore its construction deserves a place in this work. There are various descriptions of farms in Britain, particularly those belonging to public-houses and inns, to which an ice-house would be a most desir- able appendage; not only as affording the means of preparing ices, cooling wine, &c., but as supplying a place for preserving fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables fresh, much longer than can be done by any other means. The simplest mode of keeping ice is by envelop- ing it in an immense body of loose straw above the sm"face. For this i)urpose, the first operation is to form the surface of the ground into a flattened cone, for the sake of drainage when the ice happens to melt ; next, put on a layer of faggots, and straw a foot or more in thickness ; then lay on tlie ice, in a conical mass, the larger the better, and cover it with straw to the thickness of one foot, and afterwards with faggot wood to the thickness of two feet, for the purpose of preserving a stratum of air above and aroimd it ; lastly, cover the whole with two or three feet of straw, arranged as thatch. The ice will now be surrounded on every side by such a powerfid non-conducting medium, that scarcely any heat from the atmosphere will be able to penetrate to it ; while whatever portion ot