203 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
ably, but the West Indies, South America, and the 
Pacific coast, and even England, buy largely of us. 
So many different people, with so many different 
tastes, and in so many different climates demand 
different qualities, and descriptions ; but each 
wants a good cheese of its kind. An admirable 
cheese to ship to England would be unfit for the 
Mediterranean, or the West Indies. A capital ar¬ 
ticle at Buenos Ayres would not be relished by 
our countrymen in California ; while our Naval 
ships going on a three years cruise, traversing 
all the climates of the world, would require a 
cheese which could only be cut with a hatchet— 
and still the cheese must be a good one. 
Yet, there is a sound, high flavored, common 
cheese made in the great majority of our dairies 
which is universally popular and marketable 
wherever it can be carried and hold its flavor and 
beeping until wanted for consumption ; and this the 
mass of our dairymen produce, and it is perhaps 
the best description of cheese that one can usually 
adopt for his dairy. It is always marketable at a 
fair price. Fancy cheeses, or those adapted for 
particular markets may bring a higher price for a 
term of years,, and be more profitable for a short 
run— long enough, indeed, to secure a moderate 
fortune in making them — but before adopting 
their manufacture, and turning his attention al¬ 
together to them, the dairyman should make him¬ 
self secure of a market for a term of time suffi¬ 
cient to compensate himself for his outlay. We 
can make very tolerable imitations of the differ¬ 
ent European cheeses here, but their close imita¬ 
tion is difficult, and usually not profitable. We 
have the Cheshire, the Gloucester, and Stilton 
cheeses from England, of widely different flavor 
from each oth r, and from ours, to which many 
foreigners, and even native Americans in our 
cities are partial. We have also the Parmesan, and 
Swiss cheese from the hills and valleys of those 
fine pasture; countries, Parma and Switzerland, 
differing again in quality, and unlike any others 
from Europe, or from this country. All these 
have been imitated with tolerable success with 
us, but not so successfully, or profitably as to be¬ 
come staple productions of any considerable 
number of dairies — proving distinctly, as we have 
elsewhere remarked, that different soils and cli¬ 
mates produce their own particular flavors and 
qualities in cheese. 
Connecticut cheese for more than a century 
past, and so long as that State could produce 
enough of it, was the favorite of Baltimore, Rich¬ 
mond, Norfolk, Charleston, and Savannah. The 
counties ofNew-York, north of the Erie Canal, 
for some years have found a portion of their 
cheese going to England ; the “ Hamburgh ” 
cheese of Western N. Y., has found its peculiarly 
rich and buttery flavor a favorite in New-York, 
and Philadelphia; the compact little box cheeses 
often or twelve pounds weight made by the thou¬ 
sand in the extensive dairies of Trumbull and 
Ashtabula, in North-Eastern Ohio, where the 
entire curds of two or three townships are daily 
worked up in a single establishment, have found 
a market in South America ; while the plump 
and portable “Pine Apple” Cheeses made by 
different individuals throughout our entire dairy 
region find a ready market all over the world 
where American cheese is consumed. 
Should the reader of this article ask why our 
cheeses can not all be made exactly alike in qual¬ 
ity and flavor ; and why, as is the fact, that 
scarcely two cheeses in one dairy are just alike 
in taste, and a wide difference is often found in 
them, the answer is, that there is no article so 
easily affected in taste and quality by outside in¬ 
fluences. Heat, cold, moisture, dryness, the con¬ 
dition of the grass on which the cow is fed, and 
the bodily condition of the cow herself for the day, 
the week, or the season ; the exact temperature 
of the milk or curd in the process of making, to¬ 
gether with any little irregularity in the quantity 
of the seasoning, as salt, rennet, &c., affect the 
taste and quality of cheese. Hence the exceed¬ 
ing importance of well understanding every branch 
of the subject, and the chemical relations of what¬ 
ever is connected with its composition. No 
great amount of science, indeed, is necessary 
for this purpose but watchfulness, skill, expe¬ 
rience, and attention; and without all these 
combined, and in very considerable degree in the 
maker, good cheese can not be produced. A man 
with a single idea, if it be a cheese idea will do it, 
equal to Professor Silliman—and probably beat 
him in running up a curd—but he must/;« 0 !r> that, 
and know it well. About the dirtiest household 
I ever knew for decent folks (and his dairy-house 
was not much better), was that of a dairyman 
of eighty cows whose cheese would readily 
command a cent or two more a pound in market 
than his neighbors. But he did know how to run 
up a curd, and mix all the ingredients for a Tip¬ 
top cheese, and always succeeded. My own opin¬ 
ion is, that a little more tidyness would not. have 
injured its flavor. 
————0-< fr- O- ■ — 
Blinks from a Lantern, . IX. 
BY DIOGENES REDIVIVUS. 
A P R A C T I 0 A I. FARMER. 
The world moves, and no part of it faster than 
the farm. One proof of it is to be found in the 
shock we receive from scenes long ago familiar, 
when we come upon them as a present reality. 
The old style farmer of thirty years ago, still 
lives in retired places, and it has not been neces¬ 
sary to preserve him in amber to bring him down 
to us in unabated perfection. There are by¬ 
places, even in the most civilized parts of the 
country threaded by railroads, where the speci¬ 
mens are to be seen, where hardly a modern in¬ 
novation is visible in all the surroundings. These 
examples startle us a little as we pass to them, 
from farms where all the modern improvements 
are adopted. We may have been familiar with 
all the scenes in our youth, and yet they strike us 
as novelties. These relics of the ancient regime 
can not always last, and it is desirable that a few 
of them should be preserved in your pages, that 
posterity may see as in a cabinet, what sort of 
tillers of the soil preceded them. 
As I passed up through a retired valley, lantern 
in hand on my laborious search, I came upon one 
of these antiquities. Pie rejoiced in the sobriquet 
of “Practical Farmer,” from the fact that 
he was always ridiculing the improvements 
of his neighbors. The boys had dubbed him “ Old 
Practical,” though he was hardly an old man, 
being not far from fifty, but inheriting the con¬ 
densed wisdom of his father and grandfather, and 
jogging on with mule-like pertinacity in the most 
select stupid ways of both of them. Ezra Hanks, 
is really ingenious in contriving, how not to farm 
well. Were he conscientiously opposed to accu¬ 
mulation, he could hardly adapt his means more 
wisely to make the ends of the year just meet, 
without a dollar left over. 
Ezra lives in a quiet rural spot between two 
granite ridges, and if the right man lived in it, it 
might be called Happy Valley. I have rarely found 
a more perfect Arcadian view, than “ Old Practi¬ 
cal’s ” two hundred acres as seen on one of these 
Summer mornings. The most of it is plain land, 
a part of it intervale, threaded by a brook, where 
the speckled trout shows his golden sides, and 
cowslips and dandelions upon the bank keep him 
company. It is marvelous that Ezra should have 
thrown a bridge across the brook, giving a pic¬ 
turesque expression to the valley, but he would 
never own that lie thought of any thing else, 
than a better cart path to his potato patch. There 
is no other building in sight than those pertaining 
to this farm. It is the old homestead—of a hun¬ 
dred years ago — one story, and belonging to the 
style of architecture best described as the cube, 
though not put down in the books. The barn is a 
perfect match for the house, in shape and color¬ 
ing—all of neutral tints, sober wood color, va¬ 
ried only with patches of moss. 
There is neither shed, hovel, nor barn cellar, 
upon the premises. He does not believe in ma¬ 
nure factories. “ You see, Mister, I’m a practi¬ 
cal farmer, and don't believe in them books and 
papers. Folks talk now-a-days about manufac¬ 
turing fertilizers — diluting manure with muck, 
composts, and all that. Now you see, that’s all 
gammon. The only manure factory I allow on 
my farm is the krittur’s stomach. That is the 
Almighty’s contrivance, and I guess man aint 
agoin to improve on it much, any way. And 
when you have got the stuff' made after the Di¬ 
vine pattern, I want to know if you spose you are 
going to make it any better by mixing it up with 
su’thing forrin to its naturl Manure is manure, 
and dirt is dirt, and it stands tu reason, if you 
mix ’em, you aint agoin to make ’em all one. 
This cartin so much stuff intu yer barn yerd, is 
all nonsense. It is the dung that brings the crops, 
and as to the dirt, I guess there is about enuf of 
it in the ground alreddy. It is the kaster-ile that 
duz the fissicking, and taking water don't help it 
a bit. Them’s my sentiments.” 
Ezra’s land is so smooth that he might easily 
use horses for plowing and carting. But he pre¬ 
fers the buflocks, with a straight yoke, walnut 
ox bows, and wooden bow-pins, with the two 
wheeled cart. “ Them four wheeled konsarns, 
ye see Mister, is a good deal of an extra load for 
oxen to drag reound. They tell about easin the 
necks of the cattle. But what’s an ox’s neck 
made so thick and stout for, if taint to bear a 
load. I take it, it is a pervarsion of Natur, not 
to use a thing for the end it was made for. What 
is the use of treating an ox’s neck, as if it were 
a pipe stem, jest ready to snap off Mine never 
broke, and I havg used ’em nigh upon thirty year. 
I never heerd of sich a thing.” 
This practical gentleman still clings to the old 
Dutch plow, with wooden mold board, covered 
with sheet iron, or old saw plates. 
“ Folks are gittin crazy abeout plows in these 
times—hardly any thing but them cast iron 'kon¬ 
sarns in this naburhood. They are jest no kind 
of a plow at all. The stuff in ’em is nothing but 
pot metal, and the minut it hits a stone or stub, 
away it goes — and you’ve got to stop your team, 
to git a new nose or mold board. One has to 
keep all the extra fixings of a plow on hand all 
the while. And then when they du plow, they 
go down so all fired deep, they turn up all the 
yaller dirt there is in the field, and spile the land. 
You can’t hardly grow mullens, where one of 
them things has been along. I don't like the 
workin on ’em at all, they tucker eout the team 
so bad it makes ’em look as if they’d been drawn 
