DAIRY ^ARMS. ^3 



successful. The income from a milk route, the milk 

 being sold at six cents a quart, more than paid expenses, 

 leaving a large quantity of manure, increased in amount 

 by liberal additions of swamp muck, to go upon the land. 

 The surplus earnings were spent in procuring pure bred 

 Jersey and Ayrshire stock, and the business was changed 

 to the making of butter instead of selling the milk, 

 which provided means for rearing valuable calves. All 

 this work was a labor of love, and gave excellent facilities 

 for the study of dairying, and a great many experiments, 

 numerous investigations — chemical and microscopical — 

 into the nature and behavior under varied circumstances 

 of milk, butter and cheese, and observations were made 

 upon the habits and disposition of the cows and calves, 

 and the values of feeding stuffs used, all being taken 

 from the practical standpoint of the actual work in the 

 dairy. 



That a farm of this uninviting kind could be used for 

 a dairy farm, and brought up to a fair degree of fertil- 

 ity in a few years, will serve as a reply to numberless 

 inquiries constantly being made as to the possibility of 

 doing this — making the dairy pay expenses from the first, 

 though all the food and most of the fodder be pur- 

 chased. The fact shown is quite pertinent to the subject 

 of this chapter, although it may seem to be somewhat of 

 a digression from it, as tending to prove that a person 

 with some experience, and of a cautious, patient, perse- 

 vering and economical disposition, may have an exceed- 

 ingly wide choice in the selection of a dairy farm, so 

 long as it may have fitness in some respect for the pur- 

 pose designed. For a novice, however, a choice of this 

 kind would almost certainly be disastrous, unless he felt 

 that he was all that a dairyman should be, and con- 

 formed fully in this respect to the qualifications described 

 in the previous chapter; and, moreover, unless he began 

 in a small way, feeling his path as he went along, and 



