Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 299 



for instance, has a deep, narrow cellar or vault ten feet l>elow the 

 surface, walled, plastered and frequently whitewashed. Tlie pans 

 are placed on a low stone platform, built on three sides of the vault. 

 This shelf is broad enough to take two pans abreast. Such is the 

 depth of this vault that in midsummer the mercury does not rise 

 above sixty degrees, and generally not over fifty-five degrees. We 

 were there on the afternoon of a hoty sultry day in July, and in this 

 vault ice melted very slowly. This cellar is sacred to cream. Noth- 

 ing that can in any way defile or taint the air is ever admitted. 

 The floor is kept religiously clean. Lime is used to kill any acid 

 that might come of a few drops of milk spilled. The cream is kept 

 in large cans, and stirred when a fresh skimming is added. The 

 skimmer is perforated with a great number of small holes, so that no 

 milk or curd is mixed with the cream, not a gill perhaps in a half 

 barrel of cream. The night before churning, lumps of ice are put in 

 the cream cans, and the temperature thus kept low. Churning is 

 done in an open shed, in a large revolving cylinder. The cream is 

 at sixty-two degrees when the churning commences. Just as the but- 

 ter begins to come, a large pail of ice water is thrown in, and the 

 churning finished at a temperature not much above forty degrees. 

 This chilling of the butter when the granules are forming, before the 

 gathering takes place, Mr. Strode considers of great importance in 

 July and August. As soon as worked the butter is returned to the 

 vault, and never, from the time the milk is strained until the butter 

 is sold, does either milk, cream or butter become warm. The tem- 

 perature is most of the time about sixty degrees, and often, by the 

 free use of ice, reduced nearly to forty degrees. 



Those farmers a few miles southwest of Philadelphia know how to 

 make money with cows. One we saw, an old gentleman, easy in 

 circumstances, living on twenty acres of good land, keeps only four 

 cows, but they are good cows. The family consists of six persons. 

 Yet after they eat all they want, he sells $500 worth of butter a year, 

 all from these four animals. He says the secret of profit from cows 

 is to get them to eat just as much as possible. He has three ranges 

 of pasturage. In the morning they browse on clover. In the after- 

 noon they range over an old pasture of firm sod and fine green grass. 

 Toward evening they loll through a field where the trees were 

 recently cut, and find a choice juicy bite of tender grass near a stump, 

 or in the edge of a clump of bushes. In this way they come home 

 full as they can walk every night. In the fall he begins to give 

 grain, adding a little each week as the autumn lowers. 



