The Question Box. 323 



these specks. A good way is to cover the pans with pasteboard 

 covers, or hang wet sheets in the room. These specks are mighty 

 hard to get out of the cream and the best way is to cream the 

 milk in the deep setting cans or by the separator. 



What is process butter and where is it made? 



Mr. Cook. — It is butter, the refuse from the stores in the west 

 and elsewhere, melted up, purified with chemicals, re-churned, 

 mixed with other butter, worked and packed, then put upon the 

 market. The fraud is of selling it for creamery butter. In Utica 

 there is much of it now being sold. It is diflficuM to detect the 

 package owing to the color of the letters on the stamp. In this 

 way the law is evaded. 



What causes spots — mottled like — in butter? 



Mr. Cook. — Nine times out of ten they are caused by an uneven 

 distribution of the salt. Begin when the butter is in the gran- 

 ular form; sift on fine salt, distributing it evenly; use a wooden 

 fork to turn it over; allow it to stand 15 ^r 20 minutes. Then 

 work it. In this way the mottles or spots will be avoided. 



Does it pay to aerate milk to be taken to a cheese factory in summer? 



Mr. Cook. — Most assuredly. The town of Ellisburg, in Jef- 

 ferson county, has 360 farmers who milk nearly or quite 

 6,000 cows, the milk going to the 10 or more cheese factories in 

 the town. Had each one of those 360 dairymen used an aerator 

 last year it would have increased the value of their milk enough to 

 have paid for an aerator and left a balance of |600 for the town. 

 In other words, the value of the milk product in the town would 

 have been increased last year $2,000. And yet such care of milk m 

 no more than is enforced by the milk shippers and condenseries. 



A Farmer. — Suppose every farmer made butter only in the winter, how 

 long before the price would be down? 



Dr. Smead. — Possibly there would be a drop, but everybody is 

 not going to do that. Then, too, with a good silo and ensilage 

 butter can be made more cheaply in winter than in summer. ' 

 Another point, a cow coming fresh in the fall will give 1,000 

 pounds more milk during the year than she will if she drops her 

 calf in the spring. 



