42 



Lane, and Geo. E. Leonard, all of Foxborough, for tlieir apple 

 orchards, each the Society's diploma. 



A. K. TEELE, Chairman 

 Milton, Dec. 22, 1868. 



D AIE Y. 



The Committee on Dairy make the following report : — 



Butler. — 110 for the best 20 pounds to A. W. Cheever, 

 Wrentham ; $S for the 2d best to Mrs. Nathan Longfellow, 

 Needham. 



85 for the best 12 pounds to Mrs. John Turner, Needham ; 

 $3 for 2d best to Mrs. A. Lynch, Dedham ; Flint's Treatise on 

 Dairy, for 3d best, to James R. Fisher, Dedham. 



J. W. GAY, Chairman. 



Statement of A. W. Cheever. 



To the Committee on the Dairy of the Norfolk County Massachusetts Agricul- 

 tural Society. 



This lot of butter, No, 7, is part of one week's churning. The milk is 

 strained about two inches deep, into tin pans, and set in a room on the ground 

 floor. This room is furnished with movable racks for the milk to rest on, and 

 is used for nothing but milk and cream. The cream is usually taken off every 

 morning and kept in a large tin pail that will hold about five gallons. It has 

 a close-fitting cover and is hung in the well to cool the cream, whenever it is 

 desirable. The well is under a roof, and is furnished with pulleys, so that 

 forty or fifty pounds of cream or butter may be lowered or raised with ease, 

 and remain suspended at any depth desired. The cream is well stirred when 

 more is added, and is churned but once a week, except in extreme warm 

 weather. 



Churning is always done with the cream at a known temperature, varying 

 from 60" to 64°, according to the outside temperature. 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, become separated from the 

 whey and formed cheese, and known as " white specks in butter," 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 butter- 

 milk, 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 in 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 



