CHAPTER I. 

 OLD AND NEW METHODS. 



The dairying industry within the past seven years has advanced 

 from being a comparatively small and insignificant branch of 

 farm work to a position of importance second to none in the 

 eastern colonies, not only on account of the amount of money that 

 it brings in, but also because of the quickness of the returns. 

 Monthly accounts are the general rule, but among some farmers, 

 who make their own butter instead of sending their milk to the 

 creamery or factory, the terms are cash weekly from the agents. 

 In fact, until of late years dairying was looked down upon, at least 

 by the male portion of the community, and if any of them were 

 asked about how the cows were milking, the reply would be, " Ask 

 the old woman ! She attends to the butter-making. ' On their 

 part, the women folk were not slow to recognise, to a certain 

 extent, the advantages of this state of affairs, and they claimed as 

 their perquisite the money obtained from the sale of the dairy 

 produce. When the factory system came to be introduced, this 

 was one of the principal objections that was urged against it by the 

 women that they would not get money then as in the past, and in 

 many cases it was hard work to overcome it. 



It was not difficult to show that under the new method of 

 working women were the most beneritted by the change, and we 

 would ask to day : What is the position of a woman who attends to 

 a moderate-sized dairy, run on the old-fashioned lines ? With 

 many it is a drudgery that few of the negroes in the old slave days 

 were subjected to. It may seem a simple matter to attend to a 

 dairy under the old system, to those who have never tried it, but 

 the work is not only much of it hard, but it is continuous, com- 

 mencing early in the morning and continuing on until often all 

 hours of the night. The following is about the routine : Up 

 early in the morning milking, when that is over, straining 

 and setting the milk, then washing and scalding all the 

 milking utensils. After breakfast, skimming the dishes, then 

 feeding the calves with skim milk, again washing and scalding 

 dishes no mere "wipe round," as every good dairy woman 

 knows, but a thorough good scrubbing. Then comes the churn, 

 washing it out, scalding and cooling it ; then the churning, in the 

 cold weather keeping at it hour after hour, and the butter will not 

 break, or in the hot weather the cream swells up and tills the churn 

 with froth, and when the butter does come it is so soft and oily 

 that the buttermilk cannot be worked out of it, and it has to be put 

 away to harden, which means getting up next morning perhaps 

 about three or four o'clock to salt it and get it printed in time 

 to send to market. 



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