330 
Report on the Farm-Prize Competition, 1871. 
The household consists, besides two younger children at school, 
of Mr. and Mrs, Clay, and a son and two daughters from twenty 
to twenty-five years old, a dairy-help, a dairy-vessel cleaner, and a 
housemaid, IVIrs. Clay early divided with her mother the duties of 
the dairy, as do now her daughters with her, by a pleasing weekly 
interchange — alternately one week assisting to secure domestic 
comfort, and the next sharing the heavier work of the dairy, 
Mr, and Mrs, Clay's duties begin at 6 A.M, in summer ; all the 
others require to be at their post at 4'30 A.M, Fires have to be 
lit in the kitchen cooking-range, to prepare for breakfast, and 
under the vessel-boiler to heat the previous evening's milk. The 
eighteen pans of milk — about 50 lbs, each — have first the cream 
to be removed, and then carried with stretched arms, to 
avoid waddling, to the cheese-tubs in the dairy, where the two 
clean-scoured cheese-tubs have been brought from the dairy 
vessel-shed, together with ladder and milk-sieve ; the vessel- 
boiler is filled with clean water, and one pan of milk put to heat, 
in order, with the new milk, to bring up the temperature in 
both tubs to 82^ or 84° ; and this, Sundays not excepted, has 
all to be done before five o'clock every morning, from which 
hour one of the Misses Clay and the other maids are, until about 
6"30, employed in milking, with Mr, Clay, jun., and the cowman. 
The cream from the evening's milk having been carefully 
warmed and equally distributed in the cheese-tubs, and the 
temperature of the Avhole of the milk in both tubs having been 
brought to 82° to 85° Fahr., according to the state of the atmo- 
sphere, an egg-cup filled with Fuhvood's Liquid Annatto is put 
into each tub, when the rennet is added. This rennet had the 
preceding day been separately prepared for each tub, by cutting 
two small strips from each of three " veils " or " bag-skins " 
(the salted and dried stomach of a calf that had never fed except 
on milk) ; and each set of strips had been soaked in about a 
pint of warm water for twenty-four hours. When the milk in 
both tubs has been well stirred with the rennet and colour, the 
lids or wooden covers are put on, and left to stand until coagu- 
lation has taken place, namely, in from sixty to ninety minutes, 
and while breakfast intervenes. 
When the new curd is perfectly formed, a curd-breaker is 
passed, slowly and carefully at first, and then more rapidly, 
through the newly formed custard of both tubs. By about 8 o0 
A.M., the curd has sunk and the whey come to the surface, the 
dairy servants having previously lifted out of the furnace or whey- 
pan the two cheeses made the previous day, Aveighing with the 
vats nearly 100 lbs. each, deposited them in the press-room, and 
Avell cleaned the whey-pan. The whey from both cheese-tubs 
is easily removed with one of Mr. Manock's patent newly invented 
