1874.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
^95 
time I was congratulating myself that I had 
left so quietly, that the men, who were hoeing 
mangels in the field at home, would be expect- 
ing to see my old hat coming round the corner, 
while I was between four and five hundred 
miles away, inhaling the invigorating air of the 
Atlantic ocean, and having a good time gen- 
erally. Great is the age of steam ! The read- 
ers of the American Ag-riculCurist have fre- 
quently heard of Mr. Crozier's farming. Mr. 
Delamater owns the farm, and his long purse 
has furnished the required capital without 
limit. The land is naturally poor, but it proves 
amenable to good cultivation and manure. 
Mr. Delamater was fortunate in securing such 
an energetic and skillful Scotch farmer, as 
William Crozier, to undertake the labor of re- 
novating this charmingly situated farm. He 
told him to do just what he pleased, to " go 
ahead and not bother me " — except with the 
bills ! Mr. Crozier has gone ahead. Delama- 
ter and Cro?.ier are such a team as we seldom 
Bee in this country. They pull well together, 
and are as strong as their favorite Clydesdales. 
I wish there were more such men. But I 
doubt if this is the style of farming that will 
ever become general in this country. Most of 
us are poor, and have to dig our money out of 
the land before we can spend it. We could 
farm much better if we had more capital — or, 
at any rate, we think we could. Perhaps if 
the Deacon and I had a couple of farms of 800 
acres each, all paid for, and $200 an acre work- 
ing capital, we should not get up quite so early 
in the morning, or look so sharp after the men, 
or attend so closely to the details of the farm, 
or look to the state of the flocks and herds, as 
we are compelled to do now. 
After lunch on the lawn, carriages and wag- 
ons, provided with seats, and drawn by 
Clydesdale horses, drove to the house. Mr. 
Crozier mounted his horse, Mr. Delamater 
drove one of the wagons, and we started to see 
the farm. Here is a thirty-acre field of clover 
and timothy, that had been cut a day or two 
before with three mowing machines. A two- 
horse tedding machine had been used to shake 
up the hay. It was then raked into windrows. 
Rain had fallen in the meantime, and now the 
tedding machine was going up and down the 
windrows at a sharp walk, and shaking up the 
hay, which dried so rapidly, that half a dozen 
men were following it, putting the hay in cocks 
for the night. The crop was a remarkably 
heavy one, I should think 2J tons per acre, 
notwithstanding the fact that it was cut a 
week earlier than most of us here are in the 
habit of cutting our clover. It was capital 
hay. There was about two acres of the field, 
where the cocks stood far apart — so far, that I 
thought they might be rakings. I asked the 
Scotchman, who drove us, why this difference? 
"It was not manured," he replied, and this 
tells the whole story. Some 135 head of cattle 
are kept on the farm, 100 sheep, 50 to 100 pigs, 
and 35 horses. Sea-weed is gathered in large 
quantities, muck is thrown up iu the winter, 
and when dry, is drawn to the yards to absorb 
the liquid and to be composted with manure. 
Large quantities of leaves are gathered for bed- 
ding, and I take it, though nothing was said on 
this point, that the bills for corn-meal, oil cake, 
and bran, are not small. But all this time the 
procession is moving on. There is a bluff 
commanding a fine view of the Sound, and the 
distant shores of Connecticut. The field is in 
orchard grass and clover, ready for the ma- 
chine, but we marched straight through it. 
The Deacon would have thought we were a set 
of vandals, and he would have been greatly 
shocked when we came to a large field of rye, 
to see Mr. Crozier ride right into it, followed 
by the whole cavalcade, wagons with four-inch 
tires, carriages and all, sometimes two or three 
abreast, and wheeling round on the top of the 
hill, and marching hack again. I hope Beacon 
Stock Farm does not often have such a set of 
visitors, or that the man who cuts that rye is 
not given to the use of strong language. 
We passed a field of about 25 acres of mangel 
wurzel. They were as good, but no better, 
than my own — which was a consolation. They 
are sown on ridges, 2J feet apart, and thinned 
out to 15 inches in the rows. The seed is drill- 
ed in with a Scotch, English, or Canadian 
drill (I did not ask which), four to six lbs. to 
the acre, the drill sowing two rows at a time. 
Some one remarked that the mangels were thin. 
" Did you ever see a thin crop of mangels," re- 
plied Mr. Crozier, " that was not a good crop r " 
It would not have been polite to have told 
him that I had. We want to have the plants 
come thick, and then thin them out to the de- 
sired distance — 12 to 18 inches, according to 
the variety. Undoubtedly a great many crops 
are injured by leaving the plants too thick, and 
this was what Mr. Crozier meant. 
There was also a magnificent field of sown 
corn for fodder. It was sown in rows, about 
feet apart, and kept clean by the free use of 
the cultivator. The rows were as straight as 
an arrow. Mr. Crozier sets us all a good ex- 
ample in regard to straight furrows. I wish I 
could get my plowing done in this fashion. 
Mr. Crozier thinks we should have Scotch 
plows. I think it is due to Scotch or English 
plowmen, and not to the plows. I have got a 
Scotch plow on my farm, and it has lain under 
the shed for eight years. We like a Collins, 
or a Remington steel-plow much better. Still, 
1 have no doubt that where the land is free 
from stumps and stones, there is an advantage 
in having long-handled plows. If so, our 
manufacturers can furnish tliem. There ourrht 
to be no need of sending ta Scotland for plows. 
The secret of Mr. Crozier's success can be 
told in two words : Capital and manure. It is 
not Scotch plows, or Scotch harrows, cr even 
the Scotch " grabber," (which, however, struck 
me as the best implement on the f.rm, and one 
which I wish some of our manufacturers would 
introduce). It is manure. I would like to 
spend a week with Mr. Crozier, and study the 
details of his management. We know the 
value of manure, but few of us know how to 
make enough of it. 
Edam Cheese. 
Holland has been noted for the excellence of 
its dairy products for centuries. Its rich 
pastures, formed from lands which have been 
reclaimed from the bed of the sea, and which 
are in many cases far below its level, being 
preserved from overflow by broad high em- 
bankments, called dykes, support herds of the 
finest dairy cows. Dutch butter has a reputa- 
tion second to none in the world, but it is for its 
cheese manufacture that Holland is most noted, 
and for which it enjoys an extensive demand. 
Edam is a town of Holland, near the well- 
known Zuyder Zee, and about 12 miles north- 
east of Amsterdam. This town is the center of 
the manufacture of those nearly globular red- 
dish colored cheeses, which are largely imported 
into this country, and sold in all the large cities 
at from 30 to 40 cents a pound. Edam cheese, 
designed specially for exportation to foreign 
countries, is carefully made and will keep sev- 
eral years. It is, therefore, a favorite cheese 
for use upon ships making long voyages, and 
is almost the only cheese which is exported to 
India, China, and Australia. The fact that the 
American dairy factory system is being intro- 
duced into Holland, as well as into other 
European countries, and is thus made a means 
for more active competition with our own dairy 
products, would naturally make it desirable for 
us to learn everything possible as to their 
methods of manufacture, that we may, as far 
as may be, repay ourselves in kind for what we 
have bestowed, and not allow ourselves to be 
beaten with our own weapons in the dairy 
markets of the world. We have already taken 
the first place as makers of standard cheese, 
and favorably compete iu the English market 
with j_.ngli.sh duiiiCo. What is now necessary 
to enlarge our dairy business, is to succeed in 
the manufacture of fancy cheese, and secure 
the market for those kinds which cost but 
little more than common cheese to make, and 
sell for double and treble its price. There is a 
demand for small cheeses of high flavor, and 
the Edam cheese to some extent fills this de- 
mand. It is a cheese of three or four pounds 
weight, with a sharp, almost pungent, yet 
agreeable flavor, and, as we have already said, 
will keep for years. The process of manu- 
facture, as described by M. Le Senechal, direc- 
tor of the dairy of St. Angeau, in Holland, is 
as follows : As the peculiar purposes for which 
this cheese is destined forbid the use of too rich 
a milk, and the presence of too much cream or 
butter in the curd, it is usual at the bight of 
the season — that is from the middle of August 
to the middle of October — to skim from one- 
third to a half of the milk ; at other times the 
whole milk is used. The milk brought to a 
proper condition as to richness, is placed in the 
vat, and raised to a temperature of about 90 to 
92 degrees in summer, and 92 to 95 rWrees in 
winter, when the rennet is added in the pro- 
portion of a quarter of a pint to 100 quarts of 
milk, or somewhat less, according to circum- 
stances. The desired color, a light yellow, is 
produced by the admixture of a portion of an- 
natto, the quantity depending upon the season, 
the richness of the milk, the quality of the 
pasture, and other incidental circumstances, 
which the skilled dairyman so well under- 
stands. The usual quantity is a tea-spoonful 
of a liquid preparation of annatto to a quarter 
of a pint of rennet. The liquid annatto used 
in Holland is about the same as that used in 
the New York factories. The rennet and 
coloring matter having been added to the milk, 
it is stirred for one minute and left to rest. 
As soon as the curd is thoroughly set, it is 
cut into small fragments with a curd-knife, 
made of a number of fine wires fixed in a 
frame. This is done very carefully, lest the 
cream in the curd might escape into the whey 
and be lost. The curd is then gathered into a 
mass and freed from the whey, after which it 
is pressed by the hands into the molds, as 
shown in figure 1. In this process the work- 
man fills each hand with curd and presses it 
together, reducing it to a soft cake, which he 
throws with force into the bottom of the mold. 
He repeats this process until the mold is filled, 
when the mass of curd is pressed together and 
taken out, and reversed three or four times un- 
til it is compact. The small holes seen at the 
bottom of the mold, in fig. 1, are kept clean 
to permit the whey to drain off. As soon as 
