Hello I am trying to layout my farm. Are there any guideline to fallow. This will be a small dairy farm 35-45 era. This is what I have so far. house, dairy barn ( I think) with silo and a tool shed .I would like to add a hen house, tractor barn, small wind mill and pump house. I been looking at the farms by me but must are not working anymore. And the ones that are look like they just picked a spot and built there. I wood think you would some kind of organisation to it. If there is any thing that should be on the farm or not pleas let me know. Thanks Frank
Not sure what scale. HO? If so, Walthers has a new farm series Rural USA they just released.
[:-^]
Hi Frank,
There is no right or wrong way, or prototypical way either.
Farmers did what they wanted.
Some would build on a hill for better drainage, other would build in a hollow for wind protection.
Some would build the barn close to the house so the walk wasn’t so far others would build further away to better control the aroma or to keep it further from their well.
Other buildings were put where they would fit.
Whatever you do, if it satisfies you, it is good to go.[swg]
Johnboy out…
Perhaps you can get ideas if forum members post their farm scenes.
The outhouse should have a worn path to it. We had a ranch growing up with about 700 head plus pigs, horses, etc. Dairy farms are notoriously smelly as the cows are milked and fed every day in pretty much the same place every day. They don’t get out on the open pasture too much. So, you will need a feed lot (many configurations possible) to go with that dairy barn(milking). You will also need manure spreading equipment and a place to dispense it so it can dry out. A lot of times hay would be mixed in to make it better. We had a hay/feed barn too.
A lot of how it is built depends on how big it is–you would have a very different operation for 20 cows vs 200 cows. A lot of times, guys would try to locate the farm near a creek too. We had 2 of them along with a couple of springs. But if you did, you set up to keep the waste from getting into the creek.
Richard
The one thing you did not mention was livestock. I have a small farm with Kims Classic Home from Atlas and the Model Power barn (it is ok looking with a little weathering) and around my farm I have some pens made from Atlas wooden rail fence with some WS cows and horses. And forget some farmers to go with it.
If there is a right way and a wrong way, I probably did it the wrong way - LOL
Sorry for the caboose in the foreground.
Rich
The space you have will dictate much of what you can do. Farms took up a lot of space. I build mine from pictures of our actual farm, then adjusted to the space. If you are not a farmer, going by a picture would be safest. Find one you like.
A small dairy farm, eh?
Then you’d want to add a small vegtable (truck) garden near the farmhouse, doesn’t have to be too big, kept it varied (tomatoes, melons, lettuce, etc), and surround w/ some sort of wire fence to keep out critters (which would include the ‘free-range’ chickens you plan to have - I guess in the 1940s these were just called ‘chickens’
The other folks are right, there really is no “typical” farm layout plan. There are recommendations, but most farms in the era you are concidering were laid out long before anyone made recommendations.
A small farm would have a barnyard to hold the cattle on the way to and from pasture in the summer and for exercise in the winter. It is with the advent of large farms that feedlot type feeding of dairy animals has evolved. There again, your era would suggest that they would pasture in the summer and have stored hay for the winter. In Ohio some farms may have grown some of their own grain, which might call for a corncrib and/or a grain bin. The barnyard in your era would have been dirt. A well worn path to the pasture. Windmills were used to pump water, so a water tub to water the animals along their way to pasture would be common. Some farms at that time turned the cows out twice a day to get water, others had waterbowls in the barn, making turnout unnecessary in cold weather.
Simple three sided sheds protected equipment, if it was protected. A shop would have looked like a one car garage, maybe with a little higher door. Swinging doors, not overhead.
Also, small farms in your era often had a mix of livestock, even when they were primarily a dairy. A pig or two, chickens, would still have had a team of horses, if they hadn’t gotten a new tractor (could have both), maybe a sheep or two also.
A board fence for the barnyard, barbed wire for the pastures.
Have fun,
Richard
Hi!
IMHO, every layout needs a farm (or ranch)…
As someone earlier wrote, there isn’t really a right or wrong, for farmers did whatever they wanted as far as placement of structures was concerned. Typically, the main house was in a nicer area, usually with trees and shrubs well placed around it.
Placement of the main barn was a question of keeping it far enough away to avoid the smells and sometimes unsightly surroundings, but yet close enough that it is not too far away to walk.
There was also implement sheds, corn or grain cribs, chicken houses, workshops, and whatever else was needed to meet the situation. Obviously farms came in all sizes, and some were general farms with various livestock and / or fields, and others were more specialized being dairy or grain or pig or what have you farms.
I guess a good way to place your structures is to imagine that you are that farmer, and what would make sense to you.
And yes, don’t forget the outhouses - I’ve got 4 of them!
Try coming up on the new Trains Mag index and search FARM; it returns 166 entries many of which are relatively recent.
Often, the house will be located uphill from the barn (some things you don’t want in your well). I notice that you are from Ohio, and I expect that getting out on some back roads could still provide some ideas. From my growing up in rural Illinois, I can say that most model farmsteads really condense things too much, placing the buildings too close together - a use of selective compression that always seems to be one of those things that looks a little “off”. Few farmers could afford machine sheds to hold all the equipment, so there was almost always a somewhat overgrown area near the machine shed where a hay rake, manure spreader, or other similar drawn equipment would be sitting out where the tractor could access it when needed. Don’t forget a “regular” garage for the farmer’s old Ford. There has to be enough driveway out in front of the sheds for the farmer to turn and back in a wagon or such behind the tractor. There are some nice cylindrical grain storage models in HO that were very common in the Midwest.
The Farm Bureau and other agencies used to take arial photos of farms and run photos of them in their publications. I checked a bit on Google under “arial farm photos”, but most of the sites on the first two pages were companies that would research and produce a specific old photo request of the old family farm for a fee. Perhaps a little more looking under that topic might produce a site that has a sampling for free viewing.
Bill
Growing up in Central PA, I was surrounded by “small dairy farms”. And the big one known as Penn State University.
I can guarantee you that there was absolutely nothing standardized about layouts, buildings, equipment, livestock, whatever. It really did look like the farmers said, “I need a corn crib. Hmmm. Yeah, there’s a spot, out back near the hen house.”
The only “standard” feature seems to be that the farmer would try to keep as much distance as possible between the house and anything really smelly… like a barn.
FWIW, here’s a photo of a diorama that I did as part of a friendly competition (with a time limit!).
There is an outhouse and a garden behind the farmhouse.
For photos, scale drawings, plats, and data on 171 farms, go to the Library of Congress.
click on “American Memory”
select the group of collections “Architecture, Landscape”
under that, click on Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record
You can search topically or my geographic areas.
Has any one try make the looking corn on an lay out?
steve
A feature common in the area I grew up was what we called the milkhouse. They were small block structures attached to the barn. Inside was the storage tank for the milk. My family’s wasn’t very big. Maybe a few hundred gallons. The truck came every other day or so to take it to whoever processed it. I was too young to be let in on who did that. It was also a useful place because it was kept very clean and had very big tubs to wash the milking gear. We didn’t have a big industrial setup and used small five gallon man portable units that looked like an old fashioned milk bucket with a hose that ran to an octopus looking thing of obvious purpose.
The dairy farm I have on my layout what is 1/64 scale farm equipment , buildings and vehicles. Ho scale farm animals and people .Farm is a small family farm the big white building is miking parlor . White building with the gray roof is the pig pen . A Old stock car is a chicken coop. the green rook build is the equipment is shed .Farm house is just a stand in for now. Also is is a set in the 1990 and 2000s .
I just looked, and of all the photos I have, there is not one overhead view of the farm, many of scenes on the farm, but this is the closest to overall view, and it doesn’t show alot.
The industrial buidings in the backgroud just happened to be visiting, they don’t live there.
