100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



so much indulged in by Eastern butter makers, of holding 

 the summer make in the cellar for fall and winter demand, 

 is no longer of value. The freezing rooms in the Western 

 mammoth cold-storage houses can turn out a much finer 

 sample of June butter in December or January than any 

 farm cellar. If you desire to hold your summer butter, 

 send it to the cold-storage house in Boston, where it will be 

 frozen down to eight degrees above zero, and held so until 

 sold to the consumer. The charges per pound for storage 

 will be light compared with the loss in the farm cellar. 



Myself and son own a large cold-storage house in Fort 

 Atkinson, in which we put butter in June and freeze it 

 at once for January consumers. Our patrons pay at the 

 Elgin price. We furnish the capital and put the butter into 

 the storage, and hold it at eight, ten or twelve degrees above 

 zero. Skill has sanctified every step, and hardly any one 

 when that butter is taken out would know that it had been 

 made a week. It is fine, and continues to be fine goods. 

 It contains a large proportion of the original flavor of nice 

 butter. Now you can see to what difficulties an ordinary 

 farmer would be subjected when undertaking to hold butter 

 and compete with fine goods, handled according to modern 

 management. 



Decrease of Fertility. 



Decreased fertility of farms is one of the most discourag- 

 ing of all the necessities we labor under. In order to make 

 the most profit possible out of the cow, not only must she 

 be a good cow, but we must raise her food as largely as 

 possible. Summer droughts arc; making us tired all over the 

 land. It is evident that our pasturage is beginning to be 

 about the most expensive of all our methods of feeding. 

 Never was the economy of the silo, both for summer as well 

 as for winter use, and the growing of corn, "peas and other 

 soiling crops, better demonstrated than the past summer. 

 We must at once grapple with the question of the summer 

 silo. We must fill it in the fall for the next summer. We 

 must learn that it is to be somewhat differently constructed, 

 particularly as to shape, and if we are wise unto our future 



