With Milk and Sugar Blest 199 



one of the emaciated creatures was seen staggering about the 

 pasture lot in the spring, the farmer would cut a crotch of 

 dogwood and fasten it about her neck, believing this would 

 cure her of the effects of months of starvation. However, the 

 German farmers in Pennsylvania gave their cattle the same 

 care they had given them in Europe, taking them into the 

 houses during the winters. To this day the barns in York and 

 Lancaster Counties are far more imposing and better built 

 than the farmhouses. 



As the settlers moved westward, they drove their cattle 

 before them. The farms along the Connecticut River pro- 

 vided good pasturage. Later, Connecticut Valley butter and 

 cheese had a reputation throughout the colonies and in the 

 West Indies, to which quantities of these were shipped. 

 Rhode Island, too, was a dairy state. The salt hay of the 

 meadows running down to its indented shore was good food 

 for milch cows and for horses. Hull, the maker of Massachu- 

 setts' pine-tree shillings, conceived the idea of breeding horses 

 on the land near Point Judith. Narragansett pacers became 

 famous all over the colonies, and a source of income to Rhode 

 Island breeders. In Europe the gait of the pacer was a novelty. 

 It was said the colts learned it by being kept in the same field 

 with cows. 



Though it was a boast in Carolina, in 1666, that it cost no 

 more to raise an ox there than it cost to raise a hen in England, 

 there was little advance in dairying in this country until the 

 middle of the last century. Up to that time it was accepted 

 that cows would freshen in the spring, give milk through the 

 summer, dry up in the fall and continue so until another 

 spring. Apparently it had not occurred to anyone that the milk- 

 giving period could be prolonged by proper feeding. Indeed, 

 many farmers held that a dry cow was better off with very 

 little food of any sort. In consequence of these dairying 

 methods, milk was scarce and expensive during the winter 

 months. Children got less of it. In colonial times babies were 

 encouraged to dunk their corn bread in warmed cider, in lieu 



