74 



On the Production of Butter. 



at all. The chum most in use and in favour is the old-fashioned 

 harrel-chmn, the dashers of which are fixed. The box-churn, 

 with its revolving paddles, abstractedly considered, appears pre- 

 ferable to that in which the dasher is fixed ; but it has been found 

 almost impossible to prevent the escape of whey from the spindle- 

 hole, and, far worse, a metallic taint from the same source. 

 Further, an intelligent dairyman pointed out to me that in all the 

 churns in which the cream was not turned round bodily there 

 would be some corner untouched by the paddle, and that there- 

 fore the manufacture of butter must be to a certain extent in- 

 complete. It is deemed a high recommendation by the makers 

 of churns " to produce butter in ten minutes the old barrel- 

 chum, properly warmed, however, will fetch it in cold weather 

 in a quarter of an hour. But the dairyman does not grudge 

 an hour, and would rather expend a little more time on the 

 churning, and have his butter firm and of good colour, than 

 have it turned out in ten minutes pale and frothy. Another 

 objection urged against the metallic churn is the expense. Nearly 

 all those exhibited at the Exeter Meeting of the Royal Agri- 

 cultural Society were mere playthings in the estimation of the 

 dairyman. The largest was computed to make only 28 lbs. of 

 butter, and the price of it was 21. The barrel-churn in use in 

 Dorsetshire makes a firkin, and an excellent one made of oak is 

 obtainable for 50^. The motive power varies according to the 

 circumstances of each dairy. Generally the churn is turned by 

 manual labour ; but in Bucks, in the present day, butter is churned 

 by horse-power and water-power ; and this butter produces in the 

 district of Aylesbury 1^. 2d. a pound. At the Cunning Park 

 dairy farm (before referred to) there are two large churns driven 

 by steam. "The apparatus is something like the fanners for 

 blowing a furnace, placed in a trough considerably wider than 

 the fanners. The flies of the fanners ao^itate the cream in the 

 trough. From half an hour to an hour is occupied in churnmg. 

 Churning is not now so precarious an operation as it was in the 

 days of the upright plunge-churn ; yet I heard a few days since of 

 an unfortunate dairymaid who churned for two days, and was then 

 obliged to consign the obstinate fluid to the pigs' trough ! In 

 this case the cows had calved many months before, the pasture 

 was bad, and the weather unfavourable. 



Letting Dairies. — The practice that obtains in Dorsetshire is 

 as follows: — The farmer lets off his dairy from Candlemas to 

 Candlemas, at a rent ranging at the present time from 8Z. 10^. to 

 10/. per cow. An agreement is drawn up between the parties, 

 in which the dairyman, joined by sureties, agrees to pay the rent, 

 and the farmer undertakes to appropriate such and such fields (at 

 the rate of from 2 J to 3 acres per cow), partly for summer graz- 



