8i4 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
December 9 
“WHY DOESN’T THE BUTTER COME?” 
WHERE ARE MY WANDERING BACTERIA ? 
One might fill a volume with guesses and theories as 
to why your cci respondent, on page 780 is unable to 
churn his cream. I do know that trouble in this re¬ 
spect sometimes occurs, and that it is often very hard 
to locate the cause. In the first place, perhaps it is 
simply because he is churning at too low a tempera¬ 
ture. He says “ tempered not to exceed 60 degrees.’’ 
Very often, especially if cream is only half ripened— 
not perfectly sweet nor yet well soured—it is very 
slow work churning at 60 degrees. Still, at tbat tem¬ 
perature it should not take over two hours if every¬ 
thing else is right. Of course, “stripper” milk will 
churn with difficulty, and if several of his cows are 
late in lactation, that may be the trouble. If so, the 
cream should be warmed before churning, to 68 de¬ 
grees if necessary. It will not hurt the product, if it 
is handled rightly afterwards. 
If, after this long churning, when the butter at last 
comes, the granules are fine, almost crystalline in 
structure, very distinct and requiring but little wash¬ 
ing, and if the buttermilk is free from 
fat, all that is needed is to warm the 
cream, until it can be churned in 35 
minutes. Hut if the cream gets thick 
before it has much acidity, fails to get 
“ heavy” or “go to sleep” while churn¬ 
ing, and the butter begins to come in 
small, detached flakes, which after a 
long time suddenly go into a big lump of 
grease and leave lots of fat in the butter¬ 
milk ; if these and a dozen other symp¬ 
toms dreaded by the butter-maker are 
present, it shows that these are condi¬ 
tions which no simple change of tempera- / 
ture in churning will remedy. I have 
been a butter-maker but a lew years in 
a farm dairy where an effort has been \ 
made to turn out a fancy product, but I \ 
have been all through this mill more 
than once. I think it has occurred in¬ 
variably in wet weather when the past¬ 
ures were very luxuriant and the flow of / 
milk large. I have never had any trouble / 
of this kind on dry feed in winter. 
It was once my fortune to furnish a 
churning of cream to a State dairy \ 
school. The cream was about 36 hours V- 
old, ripened to slight coagulation—the / 
orthodox point, and it should have been / 
all right, but it was not. I saw that it / 
was getting thick before it was much 
acid, and had a sickish, sweet smell, and \ 
I told the instructor that I was afraid \ 
he would have trouble with it. We \ 
churned it for nearly an hour at 68 de- N 's. 
grees, and when it suddenly went to a / 
lump, it was about as sorry a mess of / 
grease as I ever saw. It collapsed so / 
quickly that washing it in granules was 
out of the question, and no amount of \ 
ice-water would give it firmness. I \ 
think that perhaps Mr. Gilbert still re- ' 
members with chagrin that particular 
churning. I know that I do. 
The two characteristic properties of 
this dangerous cream are a tendency to 
coagulate without acidity and a oeculiar 
sweet odor. I have handled only sepa¬ 
rator cream, and I know that the matter 
is greatly helped by cooling the cream to 
a low temperature as quickly as possible I1\br. 
and holding it there until ready to ripen 
it. My theory is that this prevents the development 
of the noxious bacteria and allows the desirable bac¬ 
teria of true lactic fermentation to get in their work. 
Hut S. R. uses cold setting with ice, so that this trouble 
cannot be his trouble. I would not keep the cream in 
that “ dry, cool cellar,” adding each mess as skimmed 
and churning only 12 hours after the last is added, but 
I would hold it at a low temperature until 36 hours be¬ 
fore churning, and then warm it to 65 degrees and 
hold it there until it was quite acid—perhaps a little 
more so than the books direct. If this gives a good, 
clean, sharp acid taste and a smooth texture, he is on 
the right track. I believe that the best type of bac¬ 
teria for fine butter-making is that which will give the 
greatest acidity without coagulation. The greater 
acidity is, however, not the cause but only an attendant 
circumstance of the finer quality of the butter. 
If the above treatment failed to give good results, 
showing tbat I had not succeeded in developing a be¬ 
nign species of bacteria, I would try souring skim- 
milk in a closed vessel at 90 degrees, and use this in 
my cream as a starter, 12 to 20 hours before churning. 
Or, I would go to some dairy where the product was 
fine and the churnings quick, and bring home some 
of their buttermilk as bacteria seed. If that failed, 
I don’t know what I’d do—go back to the cow, the 
beginning of everything, I presume, and study her 
food snd her individuality, and write to Prof. H. H. 
Wing, of Cornell University, who could certainly 
help if anybody could. And then I would sit down 
and remember that the dairyman has to contend with 
laws, the most complex and apparently the most 
erratic that any man on this earth ever had to deal 
with. JARED VAN WAGENEB, JR. 
Hillside Farm, Schoharie County, N. Y. 
NOTES FROM THE RURAL GROUNDS. 
TOMATO HYBRIDS. 
We are now using the word hybrid to denote crosses 
between plants c f the same order, though specifically 
or both specifically and generically distinct. 
The ordinary tomato is called in botany Lycopersi- 
cum esculentum. The Currant tomato is L. pimpi- 
nellifolium. generically the same—specifically differ¬ 
ent The difference, however, is very marked. The 
habit of the Currant is weak and prostrate ; the vines 
long and slender ; the leaves thin and comparatively 
Hybrid Tomatoes Between the Common and Currant. 
small. The berries are borne in two-sided racemes of 
about a dozen, and they average not larger than a 
good-sized Cheriy currant. 
During the season of 1892 we raised several plants 
of the Currant with a view to crossing it with the 
common tomato, or, rather, with the R. N -Y. cross¬ 
breeds, which are well-known to our readers. We 
were reminded to do this by similar successful crosses 
effected by Prof. L. H. Bailey, of Cornell. His crosses, 
however, were effected under glass, using the pollen 
of the Ithaca only. 
We tried to cross them both ways, but crossed fruit 
formed only upon the Currant. Seeds of the hybrids 
were sown the past season, and upwards of 20 plants 
were set in the field beside our other tomatoes. The 
habit and foliage of these were fairly intermediate 
between common tomatoes and the Currant. So, too, 
the fruit varied only in a trifling degree. Some were 
rather larger than others ; some racemes bore as many 
as 16, others as few as eight. Some ripened earlier 
than others. The berries of some racemes ripened all 
at once ; on others the lower berries ripened first. All 
were two-celled, of a deep-red color, and in shape 
perfectly round and smooth. They began to ripen 
earlier than any other kind, and continued to bear 
and ripen in great quantities until frost. The outline 
illustration, Fig. 260, shows the average racemes. 
As soon as the plants were in bud, .we again began 
the work of crossing, using the best of our cross-bred 
varieties as the males. Not less than a dozen fruits 
formed, every one having a different male parent. 
The probable result of this continued crossing no 
one can foretell. It may not be absurd to conjecture 
that a good deal may come out of it. We may get a 
race bearing large, round, perfectly smooth fruit, 
ripening evenly about the stem ; longer racemes, and 
an earlier maturity. 
Physalis Alkekengi, like Lycopersicum esculentum 
and L. pimpinellifolium, are members of the Solanum 
or Nightshade family. This is the Strawberry tomato, 
the little berries of which are borne in bladdery pods 
of a bright red color when mature. They are also 
borne singly. The plant is a hardy perennial living 
on into eternity for aught we know, while the others 
are annuals. There are, too, annual Ground Cherries, 
like Physalis grandiflora, Angulala, Philadelphia and 
Pubescens. 
In a familiar way we may say that the Christian name 
of the Strawberry Tomato is Alkekengi 
and that its surname is Physalis. It is a 
loDg-lived individual of the house of 
Solanum. 
During the past summer we proposed 
—a proposition never made before, in so 
far as we know, or if made—has never 
been fulfilled—a marriage between the 
two distant branches of the Solanum 
family, viz., the tender, short-lived Dico- 
persicum, whose Christian name is Escu¬ 
lentum to the long-lived hardy Physalis, 
whose Christian name is Alkekengi. We 
tried to effect the marriage reciprocally, 
but after patient, persevering efforts, 
succeeded only in inducing Alkekengi 
to accept Esculentum Esculentum re¬ 
jected every overture—and they were 
many—made by Alkekengi. The result 
of this match—there was little of love 
or spcntaneity about it; it was certainly 
far from love at first sight—was two 
rather small, but apparently vigorous 
offspring, the future of which remains 
to be seen. 
It would be interesting, to say the least, 
if in this way a hardy race of large toma¬ 
toes could be produced, each already put 
up in tissue-paper ready for shipment. 
We are hoping that the seeds of the two 
hybrid berries are true seeds and that we 
shall have some queer developments to 
report to our readers next summer. 
) FARM FAILURES.—I. 
A MISTAKE IN NOT MAKING MORE MARKETS. 
The R. N.-Y. on page 764, gives figures 
on the Hudson River grape crop. These, 
as The R. N.-Y. says, “ do not show much 
profit.” Also, I imagine, the $40 re¬ 
ceived for the ton of grapes is too high 
f^r the present retail price of Eastern 
grapes here, even at this season, Novem¬ 
ber 20. The latter being 20 to 25 cents 
per eight-pound basket. 
Hut this is not so unprofitable as rais¬ 
ing wheat at 40 to 50 cents a bushel, or 
so bad as raising old varieties of pears 
here at $5 a bushel (if we could get it); 
or so discouraging as the results of many 
ventures that all of us can recall. It is 
not so wearing on the bank account as my blackberry 
crop of 1890. The crop was large—my books show 
sales of 3,835 24 quart crates from 16 acres—and no 
doubt more than 200 crates were used at home, eaten 
by pickers and birds, or dropped on the ground by 
careless pickers. 
It is one of the faults of the Snyder blackberry, that 
it drops too easily, and many pickers, having only one 
end in view, do not regard the grower’s interest any 
more than tne hurried inspections of the overseers 
compel them to do ; so many berries are scattered on 
the ground. Only a few crates of this crop sold at 
$1 50, a few more at $1.25, and from this on the grower 
was lucky if the main markets paid $1 a crate, while 
often many cases would be held by the commission- 
man until a total loss. 
The picking expenses here are about as follows: 
For crates, marked, in shed ready for use, 17 cents ; 
picking, 48 cents; overseeing, packing, hauling, etc., 
fully, 12 cents ; express, more or less, 10 cents; com¬ 
mission, say, 10 cents—total, 97 cents. These figures 
are rather low than high, and it may be asked why I 
did not stop picking. Well, no man can foretell the 
market, and often after the largest picking comes a 
period of sunshine for the grower, and prices improve; 
