DAIRY PRODUCTS. 229 



depth desired. The cream is well stirred when more is added, 

 and is churned hut once a week, except in extreme warm 

 weather. 



Churning is always done with the cream at a known tempera- 

 ture, varying from 60° to 64°, according to the outside tempera- 

 ture. Churn about an hour in Davis' self-adjusting churn. 

 "When the butter begins to " gather," pour in a few quarts of 

 cool milk or water to thin the buttermilk and aid its running 

 off. When it is drawn off, put in more cold water to cool and 

 harden the butter and clear off the remaining buttermilk. If 

 the cream contains little flakes of sour milk that have, by heat 

 or age, hecome separated from the whey and formed cheese, and 

 known as " white specks in hutter," I know of no way of getting 

 them off from the butter as easily as to thoroughly rinse in cold 

 water several times. It must be done before the butter is 

 gathered into a solid mass. If the sour milk contained in cream 

 is thin and tender, as it is in its first stages of souring, it will 

 all leave the butter readily in the buttermilk, but when it has 

 separated from its whey and become cheese or curd, it can only 

 be removed by picking out the specks by hand, while working, 

 or washing off in water while the butter is in little crumbs in 

 the churn. 



After the butter has been sufficiently cooled and worked iu 

 the churn, it is taken on to a maple board, shaped like a fan, 

 four inches wide at one end and twenty-six at the other, and 

 twenty-eight inches long, with four-inch strips at the sides put 

 in with screws. At the narrow end, a three-inch strip is screwed 

 on across the sides, and forms a cap, under which a movable 

 white-oak lever is held down at its small end. This lever is the 

 same length of the board on which it is worked, exclusive of the 

 handle, which is turned at the large end. The face of the lever 

 is about two inches wide at the small, and three at the wide end. 



After the worker is scalded and cooled in cold water and 

 fastened firmly in a common sink, with the narrow end about 

 four inches the lowest, the butter is taken from the churn with 

 a ladle and placed under the lever, at the rate of ten pounds at 

 a time. It is then repeatedly pressed and turned till the mois- 

 ture, (it can hardly be called buttermilk,) is thoroughly removed. 



Salt is then worked in with the lever, at the rate of about 

 three-fourths of an ounce to the pound of butter, which is as 



