1864. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



109 



second, by the consequent over-working it usually 

 receives ; the buttermilk being less readily ex- 

 pelled from soft butter. 



Good cows obtained, the next requisite is good 

 feed. And what can be better than June honey- 

 suckle "up to the eyes/' or clover aftermath in 

 September ? Probably nothing. I prefer, how- 

 ever, as a matter of health, to give a feeding of 

 dry hay every day through the season. I can thus 

 keep them more uniformly, and not subject them 

 to sudden changes from green to dry food. 



But what for feed the remainder of the year ? 

 Why, get the next best thing — which is the same, 

 cut and cured, for feeding in the stall. During 

 the third week of last June I cut four or five 

 acres of clover and red-top, the clover just com- 

 ing into, flower, the red-top showing its flower 

 stalk. Sixty days after, I cut the same field again. 

 This winter, the cows, to which both lots are fed, 

 seem to know no difference between the first and 

 second crop. It is all rowen to them. I am fully 

 of the opinion that very little of the hay in New 

 England is put as early as it should be. For dairy 

 cows, I would prefer it all cut before blossoming, 

 rattyjr than after. 



A large butter dealer and a good judge, tells 

 me that he has known his mother to make just as 

 good and just as yellow butter in winter, while 

 her cow was being fed solely on rowen, as she 

 could ever make in summer, from the same ani- 

 mal. I think he came very near the truth. 



But to supply yourself with a stock of June 

 atmosphere, in which to set your milk and do 

 your churning, through dog-days, is not so easy a 

 thing as to cut your hay early and afterward a 

 crop of rowen. The thermom ter does not usu- 

 ally stand at G6° from July to Sept. 1st, nor do 

 you generally have a clear, dry air at that season. 



Hence I do not expect you can make your best 

 butter, or that which will keep longest, during 

 this period, unless you can secure these two re- 

 quisite conditions, viz., moderate temperature and 

 dryness of the atmosphere. But the nearer you 

 can contrive to approach these conditions the bet- 

 ter your success. 



I keep my milk, during the extreme hot weath- 

 er, in my house cellar, a large, light, airy room, 

 clear of all boards and wooden, utensils not used 

 for milk; the whole room thoroughly whitewashed. 

 The windows — a north, south and west one — are 

 open or shut, darkened or not, just as may be 

 needed to keep the air of the room as pure, as 

 dry, and at the same time as cool as it can be un- 

 der the circumstances. I consider a damp atmos- 

 phere worse than a very warm one for milk. It 

 makes the cream thin and watery, requiring much 

 more care and a longer time in churning. 



I need not say that I do, or that you should, 

 set your milk in the pans two or three inches in 

 depth, and skim it up at twenty-four or thirty-six 

 hours old, putting the cream in a tin pail or stone 

 jar, stirring it occasionally ; for that almost all 

 dairymen and women do. But when I say you 

 should never commence a churning unless your 

 cream is known to be at a temperature not any 

 below 60° nor higher than three or four above 

 that point, I cannot, at the same time, say every- 

 body does that, for I do not know of one dairy- 

 man or woman, except through the books, who is 

 exact in this respect. 



warm it will come too quickly, be soft and white, 

 and not pleasant stuff to manage, and if too cold 

 it will swell and foam, and not come at all — some 

 one asserting that "it did almost come, but went 

 back to cream again." One dairyman, who usu- 

 ally has good luck, told me this winter, that he 

 churned all one day and then gave his cream over 

 to the pigs, only wishing he had done it sooner. 



Up to last April I occasionally, and not very un- 

 frequently, had just such "luck." Since that time 

 I have used a common fifty cent thermometer — 

 selecting one that would slide easily in the case, 

 or that I could dip the bulb into the cream with- 

 out the case. 



When I have gathered a sufficient quantity of 

 cream I try it by the thermometer, and if the tem- 

 perature be from G0° to 64°, I churn it immedi- 

 ately. If not within those limits, I bring it there, by 

 some means, before it goes into the churn. I keep 

 my -cream in a large tin pail that can be hung in the 

 well the night before churning — not in the water, 

 but just far enough down to have the cream at 

 60°, when churning is commenced. Placing it 

 in the water makes it too cold : and cold cream is 

 addicted to the same freaks in summer as m winter. 



In Spring and Fall 62 p does well ; in winter, 

 64°; but in summer the temperature will rise rap- 

 idly enough if you commence at 60°. I never 

 want butter to reach a higher temperature than 

 66° at the time it separates from the buttermilk. 



Following this method, I have not had the 

 shadow of a failure for ten months. My summer 

 and winter butter have come about equally well, 

 varying from fifteen to forty-five minutes, accord- 

 ing to the ripeness of the cream. I think it does 

 no harm to run a bucket of cold water through 

 the churn after the milk is drawn off. If the but- 

 ter is a little too soft, as it almost always will be 

 in summer, it does much good by hardening it 

 before salting. My butter is taken from the churn 

 to a butter worker, like the small, simple one fig- 

 ured in Flint's work-on Dairy Farming — a book, 

 by the way, that every man or woman who ex- 

 pects ever to make a hundred pounds of butter 

 should read through twice, as a preliminary step. 

 In this worker the butter is salted, then returned 

 to the well for twelve hours, after which it is 

 thoroughly worked. And here I find a great ad- 

 vantage in the worker over the hands. If butter 

 a little too cold is worked in summer, by hand, 

 it will grow much too warm before the buttermilk 

 is expelled ; while the worker will do it quickly, 

 thoroughly, and without causing the oily taste so 

 commonly found in hard-worked butter. 



So much for summer butter. And now, to 

 make good, sweet, yellow butter in winter, you 

 have only to secure the same conditions that are 

 best for making summer butter, namely, good 

 cows, rich feed, a dry air in which to raise the 

 cream, and a temperature as near, 60° as it is pos- 

 sible to preserve. The latter condition is much 

 more easily obtained in winter than in summer ; 

 for by artificial heat the air can be kept at the 

 proper temperature in the milk-room without be- 

 ing made damp, while the same result cannot as 

 readily be obtained in summer with ice, on ac- 

 count of the dampness accompanying it. Indeed, 

 I believe more butter, and that of a good quality, 

 can be made from a given number of quarts of 

 milk, in winter, than can be through the warmest 



