THE DAIRY-BOOM AND BUTTER-MAKING. 79 



The milk should be strained into pans as soon as pos- 

 sible, and kept in a cool, even temperature until the cream 

 has risen. The cream from one milking churned by it- 

 self makes the very best butter, and as this necessitates 

 frequent churning, so much the better the butter is 

 surer to be sweet and perfect in flavor. Twenty-four 

 hours is usually considered sufficient for the rising of 

 the cream ; but in a cool dairy-room, if the number of 

 cows is not too large, the milk can be allowed to stand 

 enough longer to be divided into three churnings a week 

 without detriment to the butter flavor. 



The "gram" of butter, the butter-globule or cell, is 

 something not considered by every dairy-woman. If it is 

 destroyed, the butter is "salvey," and of inferior value ; 

 if preserved, the butter is firm and solid. Too rapid 

 churning is apt to crush the grain. The churning pro- 

 cess should not be performed inside of forty or fifty 

 minutes, and the common dash-churn has been accepter 1 , 

 as about the best in use. A swing-churn, recently in- 

 vented, which dashes the cream from one end to the other, 

 and has no troublesome inside work, has been received 

 with favor, and as it is worked with a crank, must be 

 much easier to use than the one first mentioned. 



As soon as the butter has " come," it should be taken 

 from the churn with a wooden ladle, and washed in pure 

 cold water, using a wooden butter-worker, and never 

 touching it with the hands. A capital da'ry-woman in 

 Wisconsin places her freshly churned butter on an inclined 

 white-oak plank, about two and a half by three feet in 

 size, and works and salts it with a long flat stick made 

 square at the end. On this surface the board can be 

 a larger one if needed the butter can D*e spread out 

 and rinsed and salted in a little time. An ounce of salt 

 and a quarter of an ounce of loaf-sugar, well mixed, is 

 used for every pound of butter. After salting, the but- 

 ter may be set away for a few hours, and then be worked 



