120 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



very poor article. The country has been flooded with it, but 

 it is a product that is really not fit to put on the market. 

 We used to call it "white-oak cheese," and it is not much 

 more nutritious, or fit to digest, in a common stomach, than 

 chips. That is not the kind of cheese I have been making. 

 The whey from this skim-milk cheese, fed directly, is a good 

 article of food for hogs. I have made some five thousand 

 pounds of pork from my whey, adding considerable meal, 

 however. But it is much better than common skim-milk 

 whey. 



As for making milk for the market, if we can sell our milk 

 the year round to the milkman for the price he can afford to 

 give us, we can do better by making milk than any other 

 way. There is no doubt about that. If we could deal with 

 men who would promise to take all our milk the year round, 

 and return none of it, with the complaint that it was sour, 

 whether it was ever sour or not, that would be the most 

 profitable way in which we could use our milk. It makes a 

 great difference whether we sell it the year round, or only a 

 part of the year. At this season of the year, they commence 

 running a car to Barre, to take our milk ; but you do not see 

 them running a car up there in June, when there is a large 

 quantity of water in the milk. When there is a large amount 

 of nutritious matter in the milk, they know what they can do. 

 If they do not sell it to the milkmen, they can make butter. 

 The condensing companies can make butter in the fall, and they 

 do not care to run their condenser in June. So, I think, the 

 farmer must keep himself in such a condition, that he can say 

 what he will sell his milk for, and not be obliged to take what 

 the milk-purchasers will give. 



The butter business has increased very much the last year. 

 There has been nearly six times as much butter shipped this 

 year as there was last, in the same time. That speaks well 

 for our export of butter. I helped build the second cheese 

 factory, I think it was, in Massachusetts, and I remember 

 that on talking it over with our farmers, they said at once, 

 "If we all go to work making cheese, we cannot sell it ; there 

 will be no market for it." But you are all aware of the number 

 of cheese factories that have grown up from that time to this, 

 and yet cheese now sells in New York better, probably, than 



