74 ILLINOIS daihymen's association. 



go to bed at night. Give yourself and family a rest — at least at meal time and 

 during the evening, and let them know that there is something in the world 

 outside of your little farm. If you do not, when your children are old enough 

 to realize that they know little or nothing of the world, they will go away to 

 see it, and you will wonder why they were not satisfied at home. 



We hear a great deal lately about winter dairying, and you would think, 

 to hear what some writers say, that we must all stop making butter in the 

 winter. If you have good warm stables and plenty of feed, and you do not 

 have to keep your milk behind the kitchen stove, you may make a profit on 

 winter butter. . If you expect your cows to feed on corn-stalks and and a straw- 

 stack, with the stars over their heads and a snow drift under their feet, and 

 that the women will do the milking, while you are thawing out the half frozen 

 calves behind the kitchen stove, or skinning those that jack frost and the hogs 

 claimed as their legitimate share of the profits ; or if you intend to keep your 

 milk in the cellar with rotten cabbage and potatoes, or worse still, behind the 

 stove when you cook your sauer-kraut and cod-fish; I say if you expect to make 

 anything at winter dairying under such circumstances, you had better not 

 attempt it; you can make more shooting rabbits at 25 cents a dozen. I do not 

 think that dairying need be confined to either winter or summer. The model 

 dairy will commence making butter the first day of January and keep it up 

 until the last day of December. Divide the work up a little; do this especially 

 if the women of the house have any of the dairy work to do. Let me say right 

 here, that it is a disgrace to us that we allow our wives to do so much of the 

 dairy work. We say that we have not time; that if we do the dairy work that 

 we must neglect some of the farm work. It is the same with our wives — some 

 of their duties must be neglected. No doubt there are thousands of dairy wo- 

 men that can "beat us all to pieces" making fine butter. I wish more of them 

 would attend our conventions, and tell us how it is done. But they have not 

 the time to attend conventions; the dairy work cannot be neglected, and the 

 children must be attended to. The husbands cannot do the dairy work, and do 

 not know how to attend to the children. So the husband — the representative 

 dairyman — goes to the convention. He puts the money for two hundred 

 pounds of that delicious butter into his pocket and starts. He is not satisfied 

 with anything less than a $5.00 hotel and 25 cent cigars. He carries a gold- 

 headed cane, wears broadcloth clothes and a stove-pipe hat. Then he tells the 

 convention how he makes butter. " That the milk utensils must be first washed 

 in cold water; then in warm water and soap; then in warm water that fizzles, 

 and then in cold water, and your butter will bring 50 cents per pound." (The 

 above statement was recently seen by me In one of our leading agricultural 

 papers.) He says that your cows must be curried off every morning and fed 

 every evening. He says that the convention is such a glorious thing that he 

 hates to go home, but as his two hundred pounds of butter are used up, he does 

 go home, and he tells his wife what a grand thing these conventions are, and 

 what an immense and glorious business the butter business is; that there are 

 millions invested in it. And he tells her how they make butter at the conven- 

 tion, and how she ought to make butter. Then he sits down to a delicious din- 

 ner, and, as he disposes of one good thing after another, and notices that his 

 children are all clean and dressed in their best in honor of his return, his heart 



