PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 149 



it away if it has assumed the right color. Examine it well before packing, 

 and be sure that no milky water runs from it, for if packed with the least 

 drop, you will hear from it next April. 



" If your spring or well is hard water, save ice from streams, as lime 

 never congeals with ice. Save rain water, and then with ice you will save 

 soft, cool water to wash your butter, without which you cannot get the 

 milk out without injuring the grain. Soft water is as indispensable to 

 wash butter as it is to wash fine linen. Washing butter is not positively 

 necessary, if it is to be used in a few weeks. 



" The idea of coloring butter with anything after it is made, is as absurd 

 as painting rye bread white, with the expectation of making it taste like 

 wheat." 



Jesse Carpenter says: 



" The milk in the churn, when fit for churning, should indicate 64 deg. 

 Fahrenheit, and should be agitated with a movement of the dash at not less 

 than fifty strokes to the minute. Less motion will fail to divide properly 

 the butter from the milk. When done, the butter should be taken from the 

 churn and thrown into a tub or small churn partly filled with water, 42 to 

 44 Fahrenheit, and the buttermilk forced out with a small dash. It should 

 then be put into trays and washed until the water used ceases to be the 

 least discolored with buttermilk. It is then ready for salting, which done, 

 carry the trays immediately to the cellar. Use one and a half ounces of 

 salt to the pound of washed butter. Three or four hours after the first salt- 

 ing, stir with a ladle, and put it in the form of a honeycomb, in order to 

 give it the greatest possible surface expansion to the air, which gives color 

 and fixes the high flavor. 



" Butter, when well manufactured, while standing preparatory to pack- 

 ing, is composed of granulated particles, between which are myriads of 

 infinitesimal cells, filled with brine, which is its life. At this period it 

 should be touched with a light hand, as too much and too careless working 

 will destroy its granular and cellular character, and reduce the whole to a 

 compact and lifeless mass, with an immediate loss of flavor, and a certain 

 and reliable prospect, if packed, of a rapid change from indifl'erently good 

 to miserably poor butter. It should never be worked in the tray while 

 in a dry state, or all the ill results just alluded to will follow. As a 

 general rule, after the butter has stood in the trays twenty-four hours, and 

 has been worked three or four times as directed, it is ready for packing. 

 After the firkin is filled it should stand a short time, and then should be 

 covered with a clean piece of muslin, and the whole covered with brine." 



Mr. H. E. Lowman, a neighbor of Mr. Carpenter, states the following 

 fact about his butter, which is a strong one in favor of washing butter: 



" Mr Carpenter, for the last twenty years, beside fattening the calves to 

 the customary age of four weeks, has averaged a fraction over two firkins 

 to the cow per year. He has had butter stand in packages in his cellar 

 for one year and a half, and open them with a flavor so fresh and sweet 

 that the very best and most critical judges and buj^ers were deceived one 

 year in its age, none suspecting it to be the product of the former year. 

 He never has, during that period, failed to reach the highest figure repre- 

 senting the maximum market for Orange county butter, and lately he has 



