106 THIRTIETH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



SALE AND TESTING MILK. 



G. M. Whitaker, Editor New England Farmer. 



Cities and large towns make a demand for sale milk. Con- 

 sequently in a state located like Vermont, the sale milk inter- 

 est must necessarily be a minority one, and though the state 

 is exceptionally well equipped for dairying, the product of the 

 dairies must be worked up into butter and cheese which for 

 shipment are less bulky than milk.. It is therefore appropri- 

 ate that the state should have dairy associations, and that 

 these should give almost exclusive attention to butter and 

 cheese making. But there is in the state a minority interest 

 engaged in the sale milk business, and it is therefore also fit- 

 ting that a small portion of the time at an occasional meeting 

 of this sort, should be devoted to considering the dairy ques- 

 tion from the standpoint of the sale milk farmer. 



In your state ten of your larger cities and towns have an 

 aggregate population of about 75,000, quite a proportion of 

 these people must be supplied by the milkman, probably in 

 most cases the man distributes what he produced on his farm. 



Averaging many statistics, a pint per day per capita is the 

 consumption of whole milk, so that the sale milk business in 

 the cities and larger towns of the state amounts approximately 

 to 37,000 quarts per day. 



But this is not all. The city of Boston is reaching out 

 towards Vermont for a portion of its milk supply, and has al- 

 ready tapped the state at three different points. A car runs 

 through the southwestern portion of the state every morning, 

 taking a number of cans of milk from farmers in South Ver- 

 non and vicinity. Another line enters the state at Bellows 

 Falls, over which something like two carloads or approxi- 

 mately 6,000 quarts are shipped daily. This milk is in some 

 instances drawn in wagons many mile^ to the railroad station 

 for shipment by cars. When the car stopped at Bellows Falls 

 one route from Chester was sixteen miles long, the driver 

 starting every night at nine o'clock for his sixteen mile drive 

 to Bellows Falls, picking up along the highway about one 

 hundred and eighty cans. Since then, in order to save such a 

 long drive, the car has started farther up the railroad. 



The proprietors of this milk route also control a number of 

 creameries along the line of that road between Bellows Falls 

 and Rutland, which are run by them independent of any city 



