232 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



were kept under the sky and milked in corrals floored 

 with mud or dust. These sheds and corrals were 

 built here and there on the property, and a bunch 

 of cows and men, including a cook and butter-maker, 

 assigned to each. Later, these single places, to save 

 the land-owner from worry and trouble, were leased 

 to different tenants, the tenant paying the owner a 

 cash rent for each cow and furnishing his own help 

 and equipment and agreeing to raise a certain num- 

 ber of calves. For fencing and new buildings and 

 other improvements, the landowner furnished the 

 materials and the tenant the labor. The owner had 

 to keep the cows up to the number assigned to the 

 ranch in the lease and for such supply he grew to 

 milking age on the home ranch the calves the tenants 

 furnished him. Roughly, this is the way the system 

 began about fifty years ago and, in improved form as 

 to stock, barns, dairy buildings and methods and 

 reduced rent for each cow, it still prevails in some 

 districts. It enabled many to get a start with small 

 capital and to accumulate something with which to 

 establish themselves as owners in newer dairy regions. 

 It gave the pioneer land-owners considerable money, 

 some of which they used in securing better dairy 

 stock and buildings and sometimes in improving 

 pastures. One of the by-products of the system was 

 the invention of many novel appliances useful in the 

 old time, but now largely displaced by outfits belong- 

 ing to newer methods of manufacture, and therefore 

 chiefly of local historic interest. Thus, in early 

 days, there came to be California styles of butter- 



