THE FAMILY DAIRY. 423 



tible and clean. If there is a spring conveniently situ- 

 ated, a small house may be built over it and the water 

 used to keep the milk cool in some of the ways previously 

 described. An outside cellar, built in sloping ground, 

 with a basement in front of it and a building over it 

 which can be used for various purposes not inconsistent 

 with a milk-house, will make an excellent place for 

 keej)ing milk. In default of any other convenient ar- 

 rangement milli may be kept in a clean roomy closet in 

 the coolest part of the house, and many a good housewife 

 makes excellent butter from milk kept in such a place. 

 Pure air and regular temperature, even if it should go 

 up to sixty -five or seventy degrees— provided the cream is 

 skimmed before the milk is actually sour and never thick, 

 and the cream is not left to stand longer than until it 

 is moderately sour, and is stirred when fresh cream is 

 added— will secure good butter, although only a closet in 

 the house is all that can be afforded to keep the milk in. 

 In the winter, a closet in the house, where the temper- 

 ature is kept even by the warmth of a chimney passing 

 through it, is an excellent place for the milk and cream, 

 and better than a cellar where the temperature will go 

 down to fifty degrees or less, for this is too high and too 

 low for the best separation of the cream. AVhen milk 

 is kept in a cellar in the- winter and the cellar becomes 

 too cold in "the coldest part of the season, it is not diffi- i 

 cult to raise the temperature to a right point by having 

 a block of iron heated red hot in the fire, carried down 

 and set upon a few bricks on the floor. A sheet-iroii 

 pail filled with hot coals from a wood fire will also serve 

 the purpose of warming a cellar. In the coldest weather 

 it will hurry up the rising of the cream if the pans of 

 milk are set upon the stove and warmed up to about 

 eighty degrees before being put away for the cream to 

 rise. This will bring up the cream in twenty-four hours, 

 making it thick and easily removed from the milk. 



