Prize Competition, 1885. 
135 
On this farm, too, we have to record the loyalty and value 
of a trusted servant. Thomas Sproston, herdsman, has been with 
Mr. Parton, and his father before him, for twenty-four years, 
coming to him in early manhood. He lives in the house, being 
unmarried, and receives 24/. and board. He stacks and thatches, 
attends to the garden, sows manures and seeds, milks regularly, 
and is head-labourer on the farm. James Dennis may be also 
named. He has been with Mr. Parton for thirteen years, never 
leaving a day all that time ; he has 15s. a week and his house. 
The Chorlton farm is a capital example of good Cheshire 
management — whether the pastures, the plough-land, the home- 
stead, the dairy-produce, or the tenant himself, be considered. 
Mr. Fearnall, at Royton, in the parish of Bangor, near 
Wrexham, occupies one of the largest of the farms in this class. 
It is the property of Edmund Peel, Esq., Brynypys, Ruabon, and 
is specially noteworthy for the excellence of its dairy manage- 
ment. The milk of 100 cows, yielding five cheeses daily in the 
height of the season — some 600 cheeses, generally over twenty 
tons, per annum — is dealt with by the eldest unmarried daughter 
of Mr. Fearnall, and her brother. One of Barford and Perkins' 
l-J-horse-power engines churns and pumps, and materially helps. 
The milk is received in two large Cluett's vats, holding 280 
and 120 gallons respectively. The rennet is home-made. Bits 
of several veils or skins, some 18 square inches in all, are put 
to soak in IJ pint of water and used next day ; and a gallon 
of yesterday's milk, which had been set " always in the same 
old mug," to quote our notes, and therefore more readily 
souring, is added with the rennet, and is believed to help 
and hasten the process. The subsequent steps of that process 
are very much as they have been already described. We 
examined a large floor of cheese of the make of 1884, in 
November of that year, and again the earlier and the later makes 
of the next year, and the cheese was uniformly rich and good — 
good and rich without exception, as indeed were the dairy 
arrangements generally, the only doubtful point being the 
neighbourhood of the very extensive piggeries, though we saw 
no sign of injury on that account to either butter, milk, or 
cheese. A small quantity of cream is taken from the evening's 
milk, and is churned with the top of the whey, and thus 50 lbs. to 
100 lbs. of butter, increasing in quantity in the autumn months, 
are made weekly. In all 3010 lbs. were sold last year at the 
average price of Is. per lb. The quantity of cheese sold last 
year was 22 tons 10 cwt., at 70s. per cwt. It is significant 
that here, where the home-made rennet was used, the best 
cheese seen on any of the farms inspected was made. The 
