VOL. XLVIII. NO. 2053. 
NJEW YORK, JUNE 1, 1889. 
PRICE FIVE CENTS, 
$2.00 PER YEAR. 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1889, by the Rural New-Yorker, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.] 
Diun) 
ON A WOMAN’S TWO EXPERIMENTS. 
Although since we adopted the creamery 
system, my daughter and I have no business 
in the milk-room and buttery, I was seized 
with an experimenting mania one day last 
fall, and went into the quarters where once I 
reigned and slaved, and undertook a matter of 
proof. By the way, I ought, perhaps, to state 
that wp are always trying some experiment 
or other on our farm, from hen-feeding and 
seed-soaking, to fertilizer adaptations and sci¬ 
entific crossing. Indeed,my daughter once had 
some note-paper printed with the heading 
“Tentative Farm.” Consequently there was 
nothing new about my undertaking. Terry, 
the hired man, suggested the idea, simply be¬ 
cause he did not fancy the new regime that 
excluded women from the dairy, and placed 
the men folks there. 
“ Mar’m,” said he to me that morning: “ I 
don’t want yer ter think I ain't right up-and- 
down in favor of them new-fangled thing¬ 
umbobs, but I can tell ye one thiug! ” 
I suspected his disinterestedness, but in¬ 
quired as to the character of the “ one thing ” 
which exercised his mind. 
“Jest this,” he said. “Butter nude by that 
ar process isn’t goin’ ter keep as well as that 
made usin’ the pails!” 
“We’ll see,” I said, and my experiment was 
the labor of “seeing." 
I wrote out the question carefully, and set 
out to answer it. “Will the Cooley process 
make an article of butter that will keep well, 
all else being equal V' It would take more 
space than I wish to occupy to na r rate my 
experience in detail. Suffice it that my an¬ 
swer came affirmatively. I, however, quali¬ 
fied it with an “if ”—if the butter is properl} 
taken care of. I found that if more than one 
skimming is to be churned, the first ones must 
necessarily be kept cold until the last skim¬ 
ming is off, and then all must be thoroughly 
and carefully mixed, and warmed to from 60 
to 62 degrees. The stirring has to be frequent 
until acidulation begins, when the different 
skimmings are to be churned at the same tem¬ 
perature. I always stirred cream when it 
was ripening, as I maintain that ripening 
consists in airing, rather than in souring, so 
the more stirring the better. Thorough rip¬ 
ening promotes high flavor and long-keeping 
qualities, and goes on better when the cream 
is warm and sweet, instead of when it is cold 
and sour. If 15 years of experience go for 
anything, it goes to show that when cream 
begins to soui it begins to spoil, and that the 
sooner it is churned after beginning to sour, 
the better the butter will be. Here is my idea 
exactly: 
“Professor W. A. Henry’s dairy experiments 
go to show that the ripening of cream before 
churning increases the yield of butter from 15 
to 20 per cent, over the yield from sweet 
cream, provided that both are churned in the 
same way. The ripening of cream appears to 
have no marked influence upon the time of 
churning. The mixing of sweet with sour 
cream just before churning does not result in 
any advantage to the sweet cream, the same 
loss being incurred as when each cream is 
churned separately. The same increase in the 
yield of butter produced by ripening the 
cream may be obtained by adding acid to 
sweet cream just before churning.” If that 
is heresy, make the most of it! 
I went clear up into the rye field to tell 
Terry the result of my experiment, when 
what should the fellow do but suggest an¬ 
other I 
“ Look ’e here, mar’m! ” he began. “ I will 
shet up on that score; but lemme say my say 
on another thing. Yew brag of yer butter 
bein’ of better grain; but I’ll bet yer that ter 
make the best grained butter it must be 
worked by hand instid of by machine.” 
I saw right through him. He wanted to 
get out of operating the Eureka butter-work¬ 
er, and to get me back with my hands in the 
wooden butter bowl. Of course, if he were 
right I would go back, but— 
Well, I puttered. I should think I tried for 
a fortnight, and then I set my mind to rest. 
Butter to be of perfect grain must be worked 
by the machine. That was what I concluded. 
“ How do you do it ? ” the editor of our 
paper asked me at the fair, and I wrote it out 
for him. 
Directions: After the butter is taken 
from the churn and placed on the worker, I 
put into every pound of it an ounce of salt. I 
let it stand for two hours, and then put it on 
the worker, gathering up the moisture with a 
cloth. It is worked as little as possible, and 
packed at once in my one-half pound molds. 
That is all. 
Some doubted, and differed from me, but I 
did not care, as I had my mind fixed and my 
plans were not faulty. I append to my ar¬ 
ticle a bit of matter, which, as it is in the na¬ 
ture of‘a commentary on my material for ex¬ 
periments, I will quote as my own. 
“ One of the reasons why much poor butter 
is made in private dairies is that the farmers 
generally begrudge their wives and daughters 
the most improved appliances for the house¬ 
hold work. They buy reapers, thrashing ma¬ 
chines, feed-cutters, [grinding mills, seed 
drills, and sulky plows, but when it comes to 
a butter-worker or a creamer, there is no 
money for 1 such new-faDgled things.’ ” 
ONLY A WOMAN. 
DAIRYING. 
“The General-Purpose Cow:”—There 
is not so much talk now of the general-pur¬ 
pose cow as there used to be. When s, man 
says he prefers a big cow with beef points so 
that he can feel wealthy when he sells her 
for old-cow beef (after the poor old thing has 
worked hard in the dairy for 10 years, averag¬ 
ing only 150 pounds of butter per year), it is 
tune to persuade him to get out his anthme- 
A PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEW OF THE R. N.-Y. LAKELET, LOOKING WEST, Fig. 133. See page 369. 
