1871.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
59 
Making Butter in Winter. 
“ Anybody can make good batter in the sum¬ 
mer.” So they say; but we don’t find it a true 
saying. The other part is true, though: “ It is 
the winter that tells the tale.” Not one dairy 
woman in five hundred can make really good 
butter in cold weather; that is, butter that will 
remain good a week after it is made. The dif¬ 
ficulties are numerous, thus: The cows have 
not the best butter-making feed ; they have lit¬ 
tle, if any, coloring matter in their feed; the 
temperature at which the milk is kept is very 
unequal; the danger of mixing in the flavors of 
the kitchen with the milk, the cream or the 
butter, is very great; and the butter is too apt 
to be allowed to become too warm or too cold 
before it is finally worked into shape. 
Over the matter of feeding we can have only 
a limited control. Nothing that we can devise 
is so good as the natural green forage of sum¬ 
mer. Our chief attention should be given, 
then, to temperature, ptire air, and artificial 
coloring, without relaxing, of course, the al¬ 
ways indispensable care with regard to perfect 
cleanliness and perfect working. 
The milkroom had better be entirely by it¬ 
self—where it cannot be pervaded by the odor 
of boiled cabbage and fried onion—and it must 
be kept warm. A kitchen closet is the worst 
place to set milk in; a sitting-room closet is 
better, but not so safe as an isolated room, with 
a stove in it that can be made to keep its fire all 
night. After frost sets in regularly in Novem¬ 
ber, the milk should be scalded as soon as it is 
brought from the stable. This is done by stand¬ 
ing the vessel containing it (after straining) in a 
larger one on the fire, in which water is boiling, 
stirring the milk occasionally, and removing it 
when its surface begins to “crinkle” and to 
throw off a little cloud of vapor, or when it 
“begins to smoke.” To allow it to become 
warmer than this M ill do harm. In this condi¬ 
tion it may be poured into the pans—to a much 
greater depth than is usual in summer—in a 
closet or room in which the thermometer never 
goes belou r 55°, rarely below 60°, and never re¬ 
mains long above 65°. This milk can safely 
stand twenty-four hours, and by that time all 
the cream should have risen. The cream should 
be kept in ajar, in the same room, not too far 
from the stove, nor yet too near it, and it should 
be thoroughly stirred to the very bottom, every 
time a fresh skimming is added ; that is, twice 
a day. The churning, which should be as often 
as once (and better twice) a M'eelc, should be 
done either in the milkroom or in some place 
not much colder. The butter should be worked 
in the warm milkroom, and it should be kept 
there while “soaking up the salt” between the 
two workings. After it is moulded or packed 
away, it may be kept in a cooler place, but it 
would be better never to let it become so cold 
as to "get very hard—not colder than it would 
become in a snug cellar. 
About coloring, M - e have given frequent di¬ 
rections. Carrot juice or a decoction of annotto 
may be put in the churn with tire cream, or an 
extract of annotto in melted butter may be 
worked through the lump after it is taken out 
of the churn. Unless the cows are fed very 
largely on rowan hay or on carrots, some arti¬ 
ficial coloring is important. 
It- should be borne in mind that these direc¬ 
tions are only supplementary to those so often 
given on the general management of the dairy. 
They by no means supersede them ; they only 
refer to conditions which are necessary, to make 
winter butter from hay-led cows as nearly 
like that of the summer as winter butter can be. 
Keeping Accounts. 
The great mass of the farmers of this country 
keep no accounts at all—not even a memo¬ 
randum book in which they note down current 
expenses, etc. The idea of “ keeping books ” 
has a terror about it, which deters most people 
whose success in life does not absolutely hang 
upon their keeping accurate accounts to have 
much to do uith them. The amount of money 
which passes through the hands of a small farm¬ 
er in any part of the country is so small, that 
his recollections about money transactions is 
usually pretty accurate, and tbe real necessity 
of spending the few minutes a day necessary to 
keep tolerably accurate accounts is not appar¬ 
ent to them, and will not be until proved. 
It is not our object now to enter into an ar¬ 
gument to convince any one of the desirableness 
of keeping accounts, but to show how it may 
be done conveniently and easily. The uniter 
has for some lime used the following system for 
keeping liis family and farm accounts, which 
are kept together, and it certainly is simple, con- 
veniont, and appears to be all that is required. 
The book is ruled with double dollar-and- 
cent columns. In one of these columns the 
expenses are set down; in the other, the receipts. 
The book need not be larger than a common 
school copybook, and three minutes a day M’ill 
serve to make .all the entries. If the farmer is 
cold, and his fingers are stiff, his wife or one of 
his daughters will gladly take the pen. Oftener 
than otherwise, u r e think the wife, if not over¬ 
burdened with the cares of household and chil¬ 
dren, would be the best one to keep the ac¬ 
counts. In a great many cases, dimes and half¬ 
dimes slip away for personal indulgences 
(glasses of something warm, or tobacco), which, 
were it the good wife’s daily duty to make the 
record, would not be spent. 
These accounts ought to be balanced as often 
as once a month. It will be observed that this 
book, if accurately kept, will only show the 
transactions in ready money, and hence should 
be called cash accounts. We almost all have, of 
necessity, another class of accounts to keep. It 
is not always possible or best to pay cash, and 
we make, little debts and give credits all the 
time. The settlements are often made in pro¬ 
duce, labor, or something besides money, but 
there should be just as accurate a record of the 
transactions for all that. With those persons 
with whom a running account is kept, there 
should be an account opened in another book, 
and some pages devoted to it. In other cases, 
a simple memorandum of the transaction may 
be sufficient. It requires no knowledge of book¬ 
keeping, or skill as a mathematician. Any child 
of 16 can do all the work, and the advantages 
are, it is safe to say, beyond computation. 
How much Corn can a Man Husk in a 
Day ? * 
W. B. Banfield, ©harles City, Ion - a, writes: 
“In your November ‘Walks and Talks,’ the 
writer says that some of the operators of corn- 
husking machines at the N. Y. State Trial of 
Implements cavilled at his assertion, that with 
good corn an active man could husk 40 
bushels of corn in the ear per day, and that out 
Wes! he supposes they could do more than this. 
In 1868, the corn crop of Iowa was 76,507,575 
bushels of ears; the highest average yield per 
county was 46.26 in Henry County—a fair aver¬ 
age of the State being not to exceed 35 bushels 
to the acre. I have, since last August, given 
the question of corn-husking a good deal of at¬ 
tention, and I feel positive that we do not in 
the West husk a good deal more than 40 bush¬ 
els per hand per day. To husk and throw down 
an acre of corn without cribbing it, a man must 
walk over 5,953 feet per day, without allowing 
for tbe distance traveled in crossing from row to 
row when husking two rows at a time. We 
have in this county an active, powerful Scotch¬ 
man, who is considered a sort of champion 
busker, who thinks it a good day’s tvork to 
husk and throw on to the ground, n’itliout 
cribbing, 40 bushels per day. Messrs. Day 
Brothers, of Decorah, Iowa, have a farm of 
over 3,000 acres. They raised this year 700 
acres of corn, which they have just finished 
husking. One of the firm told me that the 
average per hand was 25 bushels per day. Hon. 
E. H. Williams, of Clayton County, who farms 
about the same amount, and who, like the par¬ 
ties first named, has grown rich by farming, 
says that in more than 2.0 years’ experience he 
has found the average per hand at corn-husking 
to be between 20 and 25 bushels io each hand. 
This is husking from the stalk standing in the 
field. The man who can husk a (id crib his 40 
bushels per day, and keep it up, is often heard 
of here, but is as difficult to find as tbe man 
who could formerly cradle 10 acres of wheat 
per day during harvest. I could enumerate 
many more leading farmers nliose experience 
tallies M'itli those I have mentioned, but content 
myself with saying that much of this large 
amount of field ■work to the hand is estimated 
by guess work, and (hat when actual account 
is kept the average falls far below tbe estimate.” 
Rkmakks by the Editors. —Is it even so, 
that in Iowa 20 to 25 bushels of ears is an aver¬ 
age day’s work in “husking from the stalk 
standing in the field?” What, then, becomes 
of the numerous published statements in years 
past in regard to the cost of raising corn at the 
West? Here is one from Daniel M‘Cready,near 
Fort Madison, Iowa: “ Average produce of corn 
per acre, 40 bushels; cost of production per 
bushel, 14 cents.”' This, we presume, means 
shelled corn, or its equivalent. J. E. Johnson, 
Council Bluffs, Iowa, says : “ GO bushels of corn 
is considered an average yield ; and 10 cents 
per bushel is near the cost of raising.” Edward 
Johnstone, Lee Co., Iowa, writes: “Yellow 
corn most esteemed, ripens soonest. White 
corn yields more, but ripens later. Yield of 
yellow, about 45 bushels; yield of white, 55 
bushels per acre. Cost of corn, from the seed¬ 
ing to the crib, is about 7 cents per bushel.”— 
True this was before the war, when wages were 
from 25 to 50 per cent less than they' are now ; 
but still if corn cost only' 7 cents from seeding 
to the crib, and the yield M’as 50 bushels, or 
$3.50 per acre, how much must it have cost for 
husking after deducting tbe cost of plowing, 
harrowing, planting, cultivating, and cribbing ? 
Probably it was not then considered such a la¬ 
borious task to “walk over 5,953 feet per clay,” 
or about 1*| 8 mile, as our correspondent now 
thinks it. Cannot some inventive genius get 
up a kind of velocipede on which the poor man 
might ride up and down the rows? It is a fact 
that on our own farm, “ with good corn, an 
active man can liusk 40 bushels of ears' per 
day,” and tie up the stalks and put them *n 
slooks; and it certainly has always been 
claimed that a man can husk more corn at the 
