A Treatise on Grain Stacking by John N. De Lamater

I have found in the course of a long experience, that a foundation eleven or twelve feet wide and eighteen or twenty feet long, and a stack built in the form of an ellipse, and so as to contain ten or twelve large loads, to be the most convenient and economical. Grain can be put into a stack of this size much more rapidly than in small stacks. If a stack is built much larger it will require more labor to pass the bundles across the stack, and will have to be carried much higher before it is topped out, which takes time and hard work.

The elliptical form I have found the best; with a load driven to the side of the stack, the pitcher is never very far from the stacker; the stack is easily kept balanced, and at threshing time the grain is readily got to the machine. In a round stack of the same size, the stacker gets farther away from the pitcher, and it requires more skill to keep a round stack properly balanced; but if a round stack, after it is finished and settled, looks like an egg standing erect on the large end, that is good enough; it will not take water, and looks well, too. A square stack, or one with corners, is easily kept balanced, but in turning the corners there is too much fullness at the heads of the bundles, and when the stack settles there will usually be a sag on each side to catch water.