264 On Clieese-making in Home Dairies and in Factories. 
the most accomplished cheese-maker can desire in the way of 
equipment. The houses where the cows are kept in winter and 
milked in summer are conveniently near ; ample room is pro- 
vided for both milk and cheese — abundant space for storing an»l 
cooling the one, and for making and curing and storing the 
other ; water is laid on at every point where it is wanted ; ad- 
mirable oven accommodation, required under the Cheshire system, 
is supplied ; lifts for diminishing the labour of moving heavy 
cheeses are placed wherever useful ; whev tanks are placed where 
wanted, and the waste whey, let off when exhausted of its cream, 
flows to a tank by the piggeries at a little distance — meal cistern 
and mixing cistern being at hand, and every help being thus 
given to diminish the labour of attending on the large number 
of pigs which are led and fattened on all Cheshire dairy-farms. 
So great a saving of labour is effected by all these helps, thai, 
in instance after instance which I visited, the whole work of the 
dairy was done by the mistress and her daughters — no paid 
dairy-maid being required. I saw many large and most com- 
fortable homes, on farms of 40 to 60 cows a-piece, where both 
house and dairv-work were thus accomplished, — where high 
prices, 80s. to 885. per cwt. (120 lbs.), for the cheese had been 
this year obtained,- — and where, certainly, everything appeared 
the very perfection of cleanliness and comfort. Not unfre- 
quently both the farmer and his wife had risen from the rank 
of farm and household labour. To deprive either of the accus- 
tomed daily task would in such cases be equivalent to an entire 
and most uncongenial change of life. In the case of an estate 
so perfectly equipped as this the question may be put, even with 
some degree of indignation, by a defender of home-dairying, — 
\\ hy should you desire me to upset all these arrangements ? why 
should I abandon a system under which the best cheese may be 
made, and by which the skill is perpetuated, on which the special 
agricultural industry of the county rests ? To this one cannot 
but reply that such an estate as this does not offer a proper 
station for a factory.* It is because a high average quality of 
cheese is not generally made, because in the ordioary farm- 
dairy the much-needed equipment does not generally exist, 
because the cost and difficulty of labour are becoming year by 
year more felt, that dairy-factories are desirable ; and it is espe- 
cially in circumstances where they are thus called for that they 
* I understand tliat on Lord Vernon's Derbyshire Estate, althottgh the 
advantage of the cheese-factory system has been ficqucntly urged upon the 
tenantry, no application has yet been made to the landlord for tlie ertction of :i 
factory. The fact is that in re-modelling the farm-buildings on this cs'tate, tin 
dairy arrangements, as on tiic Cheshire Estate alluded to above, have been made 
as perfect as the tenantry can wish. 
