312 THE dairymaid's manual. 



moving the butter quite a distance to the store-room, 

 when the store and packing-room should adjoin the 

 churuing-room. The arrangement, however, was go 

 made on account of the ice-house being next to it, and 

 because of the nature of the ground preventing an addi- 

 tion to the main building in the rear, where, otherwise, 

 the ice-house and butter -room should rightly be placed. 

 The ice-house is at the end of the butter-room. This is 

 a building eighteen by twenty feet and twelve feet high, 

 finished in a neat and complete manner at a cost of $180, 

 and holds sixty-five tons. The creek which tiows past the 

 creamery has been dammed, and forms a pond in which ice 

 is cut. Just here might be said a word or two in regard 

 to the supply of ice in Southern creameries. It is by no 

 means necessary that ice should be a foot tliick to be fit 

 for cutting and storing for summer use. If it is one inch 

 thick it may be taken up then as well as at any other 

 time, for ice has a peculiar property called regelation, 

 by which it adheres and freezes together in a solid mass 

 when thin sheets of it are placed in contact. Thus, if 

 thin ice is stored during freezing weather, it is equally 

 safe as if it was put away a foot thick, and it is rare that 

 ice of two or three inches thick could not be procured in 

 any locality where dairying may be carried on satisfac- 

 torily. The ice-house for a creamery in the South should 

 be larger than one in the North, because of the longer 

 warm Southern summer ; but, on the other hand, the 

 most of the Southern dairying would naturally be done in 

 the winter, when good grazing is j^ossible for tlie greater 

 part or tlie whole of it, when the right arrangements are 

 made, and thus the ice question is reduced to a very 

 easy solution. Yet, it would be wise to have a large ice- 

 house, and to have it divided into two compartments, one 

 to be reserved until the ot^*^ is exhausted. 



The cost of such a building as is here described, con- 

 structed in the very latest manner, is about $1,700, in- 



