Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Concrete in the Country
With little help other than looking and listening. The farmer grasped the idea of a concrete walk, and being a natural inventor and jack-of-all-trades. Improved on the method by adding a small curb next to his ?ower bed to keep the dirt from washing on the white walk. This walk was a blessing to the boy - all the time formerly given to scrubbing and weeding the old brick walk could now be devoted to fishing. The yard walk was extended to the barns and outlying buildings. Wading through seas of mud and resulting tracked-up kitchen ?oors became a thing of the past. By simply increasing the width of the walk, a cellar floor was provided and the farmer had a dry cellar. This was so clean and so odorless that he considered such a floor fit for that most immaculate of all places - the milk house. Concrete cellar hatchway and steps, safe under the heaviest barrel of vinegar. And water-tight, were made in a manner similar to walks.
Brick work had long been laid up in a mixture of Portland cement and sand.
As this kept the water out, the farmer reasoned that it would keep the water in. And he started to build cistern floors, walls and cover of Portland cement concrete at one-third to one-half the cost of the old brick cistern.
After a little more observation. He quit digging deep cistern-pits, with the necessary annoyance of thawing out frozen pumps and carrying water - he built a concrete cistern on top of the ground and made the pumping and carrying of the water a mere matter of turning a faucet in the kitchen and the bath room.
Several years ago corn was so cheap that in some sections it was burned for fuel instead of coal. No consideration was then given to the bushels wasted in muddy feed lots. If the mud became too deep, the feeding was transferred to the blue grass pasture. To be sure. As the sod wore out, the feeding-place had to be changed; but somebody had advanced the idea that this particular method of feeding was good for the soil. Many farmers had tried wooden feeding floors and had found them a paying proposition as far as the saving of feed was concerned. In the general health of the animal, and in the shortened time of fattening. But two great drawbacks were the rats that infested them and the constant need of re pairs. In concrete the thoughtful farmer saw the possibilities of an ideal ?oor - an easily cleaned, rat-proof, disease-proof surface Upon which his hogs, sheep, cattle and poultry might consume the feed even to the smallest particle.
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