Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1876 — Farm Villages. [ARTICLE]

Farm Villages.

There is no necessity that farmers should be isolated so much as they generally are, nor any need that the farm buildings should be m the center of each farm. It is simply a matter of figures and ealeu* lation, as to whether the saving of a few hours’ labor—or a few days in the aggre-gate-yearly, in hauling the crops to the earn, with the bam and house in the center of the farm, and a mile away from the nearest neighbor, is of more value or more convenient than to have one’s neighbors closer and one’s fields farther off. There are many advantages in having three or four homesteads contiguous and forming a hamlet, or with a few tenant houses or cottages, a small village. This is especial-

ly desirable in the West where the land was originally so divided that four farms necessarily meet at one comer, where two roads cross. Where farms are 100 acres in extent, there would then be four houses together at every mile; four sets of farm buildings; four orchards, and four plantations, which wbuld condense the shelter provided by these, and make it much more effective than when scattered half-a-mile apart. At or near one of these corners the blacksmith’s shop and other conveniences would naturally be located, and in time a farm village would be .built Up. There would be far better social opportunities than farmers now entoy and many more opportunities for combining labor and capital in joint enterprises. The scattered appearance of the houses in the early settlement of a new western country, and even of the more substantial homesteads of an older one, is one of the most conspicuous disadvantages which strike a visitor from a more populous part of the country. Neither does it improve upon acquaintance, and tlic necessary isolation is much felt by the new comers. It is convenient to be in the center of one’s farm, but it is a question worth considering when a new house is to be built, if it would not be better to build nearer to one’s next door neighbor. —American Agriculturist.