36 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



equal to 300 millions a year, and lee-way for the 

 rainy season and other casualties. The bullion of 

 the -world does not probably exceed 1000 millions of 

 dollars, and at the above rates it would be doubled in 

 about three years ; to say nothing of the diamonds, 

 platina, silver, lead, and quicksilver which are found 

 in that region, in which case the result is inevitable, 

 we shall all go mad under the new dog star. So be it. 

 We are willing to trust our individual luck at catch- 

 ing larks when the sky falls. The wise will grow 

 rich and the fools poor ; but whether temperance, 

 honesty, charitableness, morality, content, happiness, 

 home made coats, and stogy boots, and hard hands, 

 and honest hearts, will prevail in this happy land, 

 under this state of things, is another affair — which 

 this deponent at this time sayeth not. # 



NOTES FOR THE MONTH. 



BY 8. W. 



Prosperity of Farmers. — It is universally ad- 

 mitted that the farmers of Western New York are 

 by far the most prosperous moneyed class of our 

 citizens at this time. What the Erie Canal has not 

 done to produce this result, the Railroads have at 

 length accomplished. Slaughtered hogs now bring 

 5£ cents the pound, and sheep $3 a head, to take 

 east on the Railroad. Thanks to the drovers, beef 

 is hardly to be had at any price : and poultry is not. 

 Farms all alluvial (as our formations are,) are now 

 in demand at improved prices. Our farmers — at 

 least some of them — begin to learn that it is easy 

 to have a new farm beneath an old one ; ditching 

 and draining are two items now added to the routine 

 of farm labor. If the more obtuse of our rural pop- 

 ulation still resist modern improvements, they no 

 longer scoff at them. Slow as farmers have been to 

 embrace the late new theories and improved practice 

 in farming, in this age of universal progress and 

 astounding discoveries, they no longer hang back, 

 but are up and doing. 



Top Dressing. — The London Farmer's Chronicle 

 has along, interesting article on "top dressing fruit 

 and garden grounds." If the advantages of top 

 dressing are so manifold in the cool and humid 

 climate of England, how much greater benefit may 

 be derived from it during our hot dry season ? It is 

 not generally known argong farmers, but such is the 

 fact, that a newly planted tree may be often saved 

 alive, by a top dressing of straw for several yards 

 around the tree, when watering alone will have no 

 power to save it : this covering keeps the soil both 

 loose and moist. Subsequent top dressing with 

 long manure, turning the same under and planting 

 potatoes, will very much accelerate the growth 

 of the trees ; the crop of potatoes being clear gain. 



One of the great advantages from not feeding 

 meadows and pastures too closely, is the top dressing 

 or shade of the surplus grass. The theory of the 

 "fertilizing effect of shade," is no new theory. 

 Some of our shrewd Cayuga County farmers have 

 long since eschewed the practice of summer-fallow- 

 ing for wheat. 



Fattening Beef and Pork. — Whenever I see 

 a farmer peddling half fatted pork, I ask the age of 

 the hogs. Strange as it may seem, such animals 

 have generally starved through two or three winters ; 

 and it requires no exercise of faith to believe the 

 farmer's story, that it took fifty bushels of ears to 

 get them started, or on the lift. The science of 



making the most pork with the least feeding, is to 

 keep the hog growing from the start given him by 

 his mother's milk. 'Twas but the other day that I 

 saw a farmer who disports himself on 150 all arable 

 alluvial acres, hawking about a few quarters of lean 

 cow beef; am I in the wrong for saying that I 

 instinctively felt as though all the fat of that animal 

 had been lost, without one cent of corresponding 

 gain to the farmer. I once knew a farmer who 

 suffered his sheep to eat out one side of a stack of 

 hay, when it fell over and crushed several sheep to 

 death. This farmer averred with a smile that the 

 surviving sheep were enough better for their extra 

 feed to compensate him for the loss ! But the man 

 who essays to fat a half starved animal from fall to 

 Christmas, has not even the excuse of the sheep storv. 



BUTTER AND BUTTER MAKING, WITH NOTICES 



OF VARIOUS CHURNS, &c. 



BY HORACE L. EMERY. 



Butter making is becoming more generally under- 

 stood as the farming public become convinced that it 

 is governed by, and in fact depends upon, certain fixed 

 principles, the knowledge of which enables the farmer 

 to produce with certainty more and better butter, and 

 that with uniform if not less expense. 



In the first place, the cows of a butter dairy should 

 be selected with special reference to that purpose ; 

 for every dairyman has learned by observation that 

 the cow that gives the most milk is often worth little 

 or nothing for making butter. This selection is 

 greatly facilitated by means of the Lactometer. — 

 (See figure.) It is simply a series of glass tubes 

 open at the top and set per- 

 pendicularly in a frame. 

 These tubes are some 10 

 inches long, and graduated 

 in inches and eighths from 

 the bottom upward. In 

 using it each tube is sup- 

 plied with an equal quan- 

 tity of milk from a sepa- 

 rate cow, and all allowed to stand until the cream is 

 risen ; then, by examining the tubes before a strong 

 light, the comparative quality of each cow's milk is 

 instantly known by the proportion of cream it con- 

 tains — thus showing the dairyman at once which cow 

 is most profitable for butter and which for milk. 



The next thing, in order to succeed, is to obtain 

 the greatest possible quantity of cream from the milk. 

 To this end it should be allowed to stand without 

 being disturbed in a cool, ventilated place as long as 

 it remains sweet, when it should be taken off and 

 churned — the sooner the better. Many churn the 

 new milk — others the cream and milk together, even 

 after it has become sour. The objection to churning 

 new milk is that a less quantity of butter is produced, 

 and unless the sweet butter milk can be profitably 

 used, a loss of butter, as well as of labor, is the con- 

 sequence. The objection to churning milk and cream 

 together is the unnecessary labor caused by it, and 

 the objection to keeping it too long before churning, 

 is, that it becomes more and more acrid until it will 

 produce but indifferent butter, at best, and that will 

 remain sweet but a short time even if it is so at first. 

 This last fact may be accounted the principal cause 

 of the great proportion of poor butter in the market. 

 The next thing in order is to churn the cream in 

 the most simple and direct manner. To this end it 

 is necessary to know the structure of cream and in 



