66 



JTEW ENGLA]ST) FARMER. 



Feb. 



but the corn crop imist run tlic gauntlet of 

 JuW and August, which is extremely hazardous, 

 unless the season be unusual, or the preparation 

 and cultivation of the soil exceptionably good. 

 This aridity of climate is favorable to liealth. 

 There are no swamps or stagnant jjools. The 

 level lands about the streams are underlaid 

 with sand, so that the water in the Hats and 

 baj-ous, disaj^pears as soon as the supply from 

 the clouds or upper streams is discontinuQd. 



For most tree fruits, and for grapes, the 

 soil and climate of Kansas appears well 

 adapted. For the small fruits, special nooks 

 and protected valleys must be selected about 

 springs and the margins of streams. 



Kansas is a first-class stock-raising State, 

 yet on that subject I think your correspontlent 

 is a little wild. How he can get one hundred 

 2)er cent, per annum profit from a herd of 

 stock, I cannot imagine. Is the young animal 

 at one year old, worth as much as the parent? 

 And does he count the year's attendance, salt, 

 taxes, loss by death, straying, &c., as abso- 

 lutely nothing? I cannot understand his fig- 

 ures ! It is easy, in new countries like Kan- 

 sas, to talk flippantly of stock keeping in good 

 condition the year round on the Avild range. 

 Slip-shod pioneers often allow their cattle to 

 browse for a living through the winter ; and 

 by seeking the brush and herbage in protected 

 ravines they generally get through ; sometimes 

 in tolerable condition, but more generally with 

 lank bodies and decimated numbers. This 

 state of things, too, is but temporary. It 

 passes away entirely as the country is settled 

 and the range exhausted. 



No man desiring to malce vioney hy stock- 

 raising in Kansas will trust bis herds to the 

 wild range in winter. At present he can put 

 up plenty of good prairie hay, which costs but 

 the cutting and stacldng. This answers a good 

 purpose. Yet cattle do not get remarkably 

 fat upon it. As this resource fades away, 

 under the pressure of an incoming population, 

 tame pastures and meadow hay must take its 

 place. And the change will be a happy one. 



Kansas is a noble State. She is being rap- 

 idly settled and her resources developed by an 

 energetic industrious people. All must feel 

 pleased at this, and many thousands will better 

 their condition and prospects by joining their 

 destinies to that of this young rising star. 

 Yet 1 must say that new countries are seldom 

 permanently benefited by exorliitant praises 

 and over drawn statements of natural advan- 

 tages. I feel iimch interested in the prosperity 

 of our young ^Vestern States, and should any 

 one desire further knowledge of the country 

 along tlie Kansas river, as far ^ycst as Junc- 

 tion City or Salina, they may address me, and 

 I will reply through the Fahmer, if agreeable 

 to the publishers. JoilN D.WIS. 



. Box oU. Decatur, III., Jan. 8, 1S71. 



UxcOLORED CiiEKSK. — The demand for 

 wliil^e or uncolored cheese is said to be stead- 



ly increasing. It is stated upon reliable au- 

 thority that the use of annotto for coloring 

 cheese and butter has been discarded in some 

 of the New York cheese factories. A number 

 of the Herkimer "fancy factories" (so Mr. 

 AVillard reports) made uncolored cheese all 

 through the past season, and the sales of such 

 cheese were at the highest rates received at 

 the Little Falls market. From the fact that 

 much of the annotto used for coloring butter 

 and cheese is adidterated with poisons. it.-j use 

 should be discountenanced. It adds nothing 

 to the palatable (pialities of cheese, aiid if it 

 Avere not for the requirements of 'the English 

 market for high-colored cheese, it is probable 

 that there would be little difficulty in exclud- 

 ing annotto from the manufacture of cheese. 

 For American use, it might be dispensed with 

 at once. 



BUTTEK MAKUSTG. 

 The New York Tribune gives the following 

 as the points of Mr. O. S. Bliss' address at the 

 late Dairyman's Convention at Utica, N. Y : — 



It is not true that the management of a good 

 butter dairy has been reduced to a science. 

 We cannot too earnestly urge the necessity of 

 cooling the milk as soon as it is drawn from 

 the cow to about 58 degrees, after which an 

 increase of severtil degrees may be permitted, 

 with advantage to both quantity and quality 

 of the butter. To this end I advise tanks, 

 holding say oO gallons of water, in which the 

 newly filled pans may be placed. A supply of 

 running water would be most convenient for 

 this purpose, but it is not indispensable. As 

 a general rule the amount of water required 

 for cooling a mess of milk in a properly con- 

 structed tank- may be very readily supplied 

 from a well without any very great expendi- 

 ture of force. I would not recommend the 

 use of ice in butter making, except in extreme 

 cases, and only in water for cooling milk or 

 cream. With good cows, good feed, and prop- 

 er accommodations for setting the milk, there 

 is little difficulty in making good butter, but it 

 must be confessed, alter all, that it is, in a 

 sense, an occult science — there is a soi't of 

 slight about it which, if it does not come by 

 nature, must b^ acquired by experience. We 

 may lay down positive rules for every opera- 

 tion, but the circumstances in which different 

 dairies are situated are so vai'ious that these 

 rules, founded upon the highest success in one 

 instance, might not prove just the thing In the 

 other. In coni-lusion, I advise that skinuned 

 milk be put into the swill-barrel, and not be 

 made into cheese. When fed to pigs supplied 

 witn waste material 'from which to make the 

 coarser and absorbent portion of the manure, 

 it will pay better than in any other way. One 

 year with another it is a question if the pigs 

 themselves will not pay quite as well as the 

 skimmed cheese, and the manure remain as net 

 profit. 



