132 
AMERICAN ACRIOULTURIST. 
[April, 
Fig. 1.— ^EXTERIOR OP CHEESE ROOM. 
How , Cheddar Cheese is Made. 
ET ETA M. COLLINS. 
Mr. Editor: You expressed a desire to go 
through our cheese-rooms again, arid to see how 
the Cheddar Cheese was made. If you can spare 
a few moments this morning, and will imagine 
yourself at my elbow, I will take you around 
with pleasure. We have a dairy of 40 cows. 
You remember they used to be milked in a yard. 
5 
6 
Fig. 2.— PLAN OE CHEESE ROOM. 
A, Cheese Boom; B, Curing Boom; 1, Furnace with large 
kettle and closely fitting coyer; 2, Steam pipe from furnace 
to steam chamber under vat; 3, Vat for milk; 4, Sink with 
strainer; 5, Tank for sweet whey; 6, Tank for sour whey; 
7, Curd mill; 8, large table, formerly work bench; 9, 
Cheese presses; 10, Shelves; 11, Shelf under window. 
Now father has milking stables. These are a 
decided improvement. Most of the cows have 
learned to drink whey, so we at present do 
not keep so many pigs as we formerly did. 
Do you recognize, in fig. 1, the old door-way 
to the cheese-room ? Do you remember washing 
your hands in the tank of sour whey in front, 
after your blackberrying excursion with Willie 
Fig. 3.— INSIDE OP CHEESE ROOM. 
and I? That stands there still—one of the 
fixtures. They cannot feed out whey sweet, as 
it would kill cows or pigs. Father talked about 
having it carried in pipes, but it would require 
so much grading that it was not finally done. 
Figure 2 is a plan of the cheese-rooms; fig. 3 
shows the inside and a view of the vat, and meth¬ 
od of heating the milk by steam. The evening’s 
milk is strained into the vat, and kept cool with 
covered pails of ice water till morning, when 
the cream is removed, heated to 8G'’, and re¬ 
turned to the milk. Frequently both butter and 
cheese are made from the same milk, but the 
practice is unknown in our dairy. A ball of 
annotto, an inch in diameter, is rubbed up in a 
bowl with a little wmrm water, in wdiich has 
been dissolved a half teaspoonful of soda to 
brighten the annotto, as a high color is desirable 
in Cheddar Cheese, and the whole is thoroughly 
mixed with the milk. The morning’s milk has 
been strained into the vat, the whole heated to 
90°, the rennet added, the curd has come, and 
there Mary _ _ 
stands cut- - . 
ting it up 4.-WOODEN KNIFE. 
with a wooden knife, fig. 4, into parallelopipe- 
dons (isn’t that learned!) an inch square at 
the top. Mary cuts up an entire rennet, puts it 
into a pitcher w’ith a quart of water and a half 
pint of salt, and uses about a gill to bring the 
curd, adding a little water occasionally as that 
in the pitcher gets low. A good strong rennet 
will last a week. Calves’ rennets differ so much 
in strength that the only rule possible is to use 
as little as wdll do. Mary keeps two pitchers for 
rennet, and prepares the second one a day or 
two before she begins to use from it, when, if 
there is still any liquid remaining in the first, 
it is carefully strained into the second. 
In about half an hour Mary will begin to 
break up the curd wdth her hand; moving it 
gently for twenty 
minutes, mean¬ 
while increasing 
the heat to 96°, 
when one end of 
the vat is raised 
by means of the 
screw, and the 
process of draw¬ 
ing off the whey 
commences,and is 
continued for an 
hour or two. 
When it is suffi¬ 
ciently dry, it is 
weighed, salted in ^-“Ciird mill. 
the proportion of 1 oz. dry salt to 5 lbs. curd, 
cooled off, and pressed in large hoops for half 
an hour, when it is removed and ground into 
lumps, the size of a pea, in the curd mill, fig. 5, 
of which fig. 6 is the cylinder. This turns 
against a curved surface with similar teeth. By 
this ihill the curd is not really ground, but 
picked fine. Cotton bags, fig. 7, are then filled 
with the curd and 
pressed in seven inch tin 
hoops, fig. 8, strongly 
banded with iron, under 
1,000 lbs. weight to 20 
lbs. curd, for two days. 
Once during this time 
the cheeses are taken 
out, turned, and the bags replaced by ban¬ 
dages. We have one press which holds eight 
hoops, fig. 9; the others only four. They 
are then bandaged anew, immersed in a kettle 
of scalding brine to make a rind impervious to 
the flies, and stored away in the curing-room, 
where they are daily turned, and, after the first 
morning, dressed down with whey, butter and 
annotto for a month or six weeks. This is the 
room which you used to say reminded you of 
pine apples, strawberries and roses. They are 
taken from this room to the stone cheese-house, 
where the process ef curing still goes on. By 
Fig. 6. 
and by the shelves, from the floor to the ceiling, 
will be filled with beautiful little Cheddar 
Cheeses, fig. 10, just alike, each weighing from 
10 to 12 lbs., and about the color of a horse 
chestnut. TheChed- 
darCheeses are made 
extensively in Eng¬ 
land, and are im¬ 
ported for this mar¬ 
ket. The name is 
taken from the town 
Fig. 8. of Cheddar, in the 
part of England, where they are 
manufactured on a large scale. Mr. F. W. Col¬ 
lins introduced the idea of making them in 
this country, in his dairy in Morris, Otsego 
County, N. Y., in 1862, since which time he 
has confined his dairy to the production of for¬ 
eign cheese, mostly of that stamp. The whole¬ 
sale price has been regulated by the exchange 
on gold, and consequently has vacillated widely. 
In 1862 it was 16 cents per lb. ; in 1863, 25; 
in 1864, 40; in 1865, 30; in 1866, it has ranged 
from 33 to 35 cents per pound. 
[The manufacture of the finer varieties of 
cheese is receiving great attention in the dairy 
districts. The introduction of the factory sys¬ 
tem by Jesse Williams, 
of Rome, a few years 
since, has had the hap¬ 
piest influence in the im¬ 
provement of the qual¬ 
ity of American cheese, 
and in the demand for 
it in other countries, es¬ 
pecially England. In 
1857 the total export of 
American cheese amounted to but 6’I 2 millions 
of pounds. In 1864 the exports from this port 
alone were estimated at fifty millions of pounds. 
It only needs suitable care in the management 
of the dairy to give us the command of the 
cheese markets of the world. The Cheddar is 
the highest style of English 
cheese. It will be seen from 
the prices named by our cor¬ 
respondent that they are near¬ 
ly a third higher than the 
average price of ordinary qual¬ 
ities of cheese in those years. 
This is a pretty strong argument for absolute 
cleanliness in the milking stables, and the 
greatest nicety in the dairy-room. —Eds.] 
Fig. 10. 
Fig. 9. 
Thill and Pole Harrows. —It is very desi¬ 
rable to give corn, sorghum, potatoes, and all 
root crops very early culture. This cannot be 
well done with implements having teeth which 
shovel, scrape, slice, or otherwise move much 
the soil. The best hoe for many purposes is the 
potato hook, and harrows of various sizes are 
the best implements for the tillage of such 
crops. Potatoes require little care, and if planted 
deep may be harrowed without referenee to the 
rows, but for other cr®ps the teeth must be 
guided to stir the soil and not touch the plants. 
Why not bolt a pair of thills and a handle or 
pair of plow handles to a light (A) harrow ? 
Clods and stones will have much less influence 
upon it than if drawn simplj^ by the clevis. The 
thills may be very narrow. With a pole, using 
two horses, and taking out the middle teeth, the 
harrow being run astride the rows, the work of 
corn hoeing might be greatly facilitated. The 
full efficacy of a harrow is secured only when 
every tooth does its work and no one follows in 
the track of another. This may be better secured 
by using thills and poles than by any other way. 
