The Board of Agriculture supplied the necessary cheese- 

 making utensils and the Agricultural Education Depart- 

 ment engaged a qualified Instructress to take charge of the 

 Dairy, with the assistance of a local Committee of milk sup- 

 pliers. Twenty-seven Farmers agreed to spare the compara- 

 tively small quantities of surplus milk they had, for the school, 

 and arrangements were made to fetch it from their respective 

 farms, which were scattered over a district of fully 5 miles 

 radius. 



In this way 236,159 Ibs. of milk were converted into 

 cheese, which yielded when ripe 23,660 Ibs. of prime quality 

 cheese. After deducting all expenses, save the hire of the 

 utensils loaned by the Board and the salary of the Instruc- 

 tress in charge, the suppliers received on an average 14d. 

 per gallon for the surplus summer milk. Even if interest on 

 the money, depreciation of plant and salary of cheesemaker 

 had been debited against the milk suppliers they would still 

 have got fully 13d. per gallon for the milk at the farm. 



The disposal of these cheeses is important, seeing that they 

 were sold either direct to the consumer or the big retail grocers in 

 the county. The season's make, being of uniform quality, 

 soon sold out, and it is sufficient to add, that this demonstra- 

 tion has already led to the formation of a registered coopera- 

 tive society in this district. 



Look for a moment at the other side. Had this 

 Demonstration not been made, the surplus milk would most 

 likely have been given to calves or made into butter. Even 

 if the Farmers had all decided to make cheeses, it would have 

 meant that 27 sets of apparatus would have been required, 

 and that no less than 27 persons would have been making 

 cheeses each day. Further there would have been at least 

 27 different qualities of cheese. The variation in quality 

 would not have made the cheeses acceptable to the larger 

 retail grocers in the county, and the individual Farmers 

 would only have been able to supply very small quantities 

 at a time. In addition there would have been 27 times as* 

 many folks spending time and money in marketing these 

 small lots of cheese.* 



* c.p. English Farming, Past and Present, by R. E. Prothero (President 

 of the Board of Agriculture), p. 391. 



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