Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Monday, Got to get to work on time!
On many farms there is a out building with outward leaning sides forming a keystone (excluding roof), or diamond like shape (if you include the roof). What is this type of building called? Given the general practicality of the farmer, why is the shape the way it is?
Re: Monday, Got to get to work on time!
A pretty corny question for a Monday morning. At least it's stopped raining here in Oh this morning.
Suh, I do b'leve you
got the fust part co-rect.
Re: Suh, I do b'leve you
Wouldn't the second part be right too? Thats what my memory tells me.
glc
Iah caint quarrel with the secon
part neither. But tis a ruzult not the purpz as I was learned. I suppose I'm splittin some mighty fine corn silk har, but I'm a hold'in out a mite longer.
Monday answer
As Dale pointed out, the answer is a corn crib. In older times it is usually a wooden shed with outward sloping sides that were covered by an overhanging steeply pitched roof. The sides consisted of boards with open spaces between them, or after 1900, a wire mesh. The corn is placed there to dry out so that it can be used for feed. The rough floor (which can have a screen underneath to evacuate moisture and keep out animals) is normally well off the ground and uses corner pillars as a supporting base. Likely the pillars have inverted pie plates or something similar between the ground and the floor to deter mice. The stairs to a corn crib are not attached and removable so that that avenue of entrance is denied critters too. As was explained to me the shape of the crib, smaller on the bottom and wider at the top is to limit the amount of corn on the bottom where moisture can collect and to place increasingly more corn near the top where it is warmer and dryer. As Gary called to our attention, the sloping sides also help keep the corn inside from wet weather even if there is some wind. A crib can be defined as essentially any building used to store anything, but for the Great Plains the crib may have partly retained its name from the similarity to a child�s cradle where the sides are splayed outward. Or it just may have been a name used to point out where the corn "slept". Cribs were often the first things burned when a place was under attack--this was a standard military tactic to demoralize the enemy.
Today�s corn cribs can be fully enclosed and any shape and may also be solar powered where the warm air from under a dark roof is blown to the bottom where it rises to form a convection dryer.