522 BOABD OTF AGRICULTUfiK. 



Professor Decker: I suppose so. 



The President: In relation to tliis matter of tlie farmers' wives making 

 butter, I want to tell you of an experience we bad at a farmers' insti- 

 tute. Thei-e was some money raised for offering prizes to the farmers' 

 wives to bring in country butter and compete for the prizes.- They brought 

 in butter; they filled up a good size show case, and it looked excellent. 

 One would naturally say to look at that buttei* through the show case, 

 that it was very fine in every sense. There wasn't very much of it that 

 was colored, though it looked a good market color, and it was atti-active 

 looking on the whole. I judged that butter and scored it, and there was 

 just one lot of butter in that show ^ase that had what we would call a 

 desirable flavor. There were all sorts of flavors in those different samples 

 of butter. Some of them were very nice looking butters, but when you 

 came to taste of them it was different. I had a class of students studying 

 dairying, and I showed them these butters. They began looking in the 

 show cases, and it did look mighty attractive, but it made some of those 

 young men and women mightily surprised when they came to taste some 

 of that butter. 



Professor Decker: In my discussion of the subject, I did not want to 

 imply that good butter could not be made on the farm, because it can; 

 but, as a usual thing, we do not have the equipments on the farm for 

 making butter and managing it properly. It takes time. Perhaps, if you 

 have the time to put into it, it is a good way to spend j^our time, but, as I 

 said, this is a time of specializing, and I believe there is a big enough field 

 for the farmer to specialize in selecting his cows and caring for them 

 properly. 



jMr. Burnside: Keep milk cows? 



Professor Decker: Yes, keep milk cows, and get more out of the cows, 

 and let the experts make the butter who study all these preliminaries of 

 making the butter riglit and putting it up in the right packages, and in 

 that way we will cut off this supply for process butter. They must get 

 their supplies from somewhere, and when we get the people to making a 

 quality of butter that will be too expensive to buy for process butter, we 

 will put them out of business. It is a sad commentary on the quality of 

 dairy butter when they can get such large quantities of it. The trouble 

 is with the farmer. You have to begin right there. There Avill be a good 

 enough market for the good article. Let's study and specialize along these 

 lines. Perhaps there might be some changes in the creamery business. 

 I expect to see the large separators largely done away with at the cream- 

 eries and the hand separators come more into use, so the farmer will 

 have the warm skim milk at the farm, and they won't be to the expense 

 of taking that to the creamery and back again. The farmer will merely 

 take his cream to the creamery, and the creamerymen will ripen that 



