CHAPTER XXXI 



DAIRY BUTTER MAKING 



The large place so long held by home-made butter is now 

 largely filled by that made in a factory, called creamery butter, 

 and the change has come about almost whoUy during the past 

 twenty-five years. Whereas formerly every rural home was 

 supposed to make butter sufficient for its needs, if not for sale 

 as well, it is now not at all infrequent to find that on farms where 

 ten to twenty cows are kept no butter whatever is regularly made, 

 creamery butter being purchased for consumption on the farm. 

 This has been in most cases beneficial in. relieving the housewife 

 in many instances of a portion of her burden, as well as render- 

 ing it possible to secure a greater cash return from the herd 

 through the production of a larger quantity of more uniformly 

 high class butter, and through it the finding of better market. 



It is not an unmixed good, however, since some buy who 

 should make. Once the art of making cheese, soap, syrup and 

 the curing of meats was well known and practiced by the people 

 in general. Now these are manufactured elsewhere and the pro- 

 ducer must buy when he should have preserved his own. It is to 

 be hoped that butter making does not go the same road. 



The Place for Farm-made Butter. — There are places in the 

 northern creamery sections of the country as well as occasional 

 instances in creamery territory where the production of a high 

 class dairy butter for market is being found highly profitable. 



The principle underlying the process of butter making is 

 identical whether the work be done on the farm or in the factory, 

 on a small scale or a large. The methods and machines employed 

 to accomplish the work differ in size but not in principle. 



Collecting the Cream. — On farms it will be found almost 

 universally desirable to collect the cream as produced from day 

 to day and hold it in well tinned cans. The ordinary four- 

 gallon " shot gun " can, eight inches in diameter and twenty 

 inches high, is excellent. If the cans are rusty or have exposed 

 346 



