i89o 
623 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
easier explanation of arithmetical methods and principles. 
As to English grammar, I think far too much time is 
given to it, and at too early an age. When the 
child has become a fluent and rapid reader, a few weeks 
will teach him the‘'parts of speech,” the structure of 
sentences and the chief rules of so-called “ agreement ” 
and “ government.” Instead of putting so much time as 
is commonly done upon mere local and political geography 
I would put more upon physical geography, with the 
use of quite a simple text-hook. The farmer’s boy ought 
to know the facts and laws of soils, climates, storms, 
crops and animals, and the agencies that produce and 
modify them. The “ staple products ” of each zone and 
region will thus be learned by the reason and not as 
mere matters of memory. 
Animal anatomy and physiology are now taught in most 
of our common schools with excellent engravings and col¬ 
ored charts, and in our graded and high schools the elements 
of geology, botany, physics 
and chemistry. If I were a 
farmer’s boy intending to be 
a farmer, I think I would 
study very hard on all these 
forms of “out-door science.” 
Before and after school, too, 
and in the long vacations I 
would keep the run of all 
farm operations, learn from 
my father the reasons for his 
plans and operations, and try 
to share in the plans and the 
results. I would try to be¬ 
come deft and skillful in all 
farm processes, such as hand 
mowing, pitching, plowing, 
care of stock, milking, shear¬ 
ing, pruning and handling 
farm tools and machines. I 
would have if possible, and 
read some of the best books on 
farming, such as Allen’s New 
American Farm Book, Miles’s 
Stock Breeding (or Curtis’s or Saunders’s), Stewart’s Feed¬ 
ing Farm Animals, Harris’s Talks on Manures and like 
books. I would also try to read each week The Rural 
New-Yorker, Country Gentleman, Ohio Farmer or some 
other really good agricultural paper, selecting the articles 
that gave most information on the sort of farming my 
father pursued or which I intended to pursue. As soon as 
I had a thoroughly good education in the common English 
branches, I would try to spend four years at a good agri¬ 
cultural and mechanical college. If that of my own State 
was not doing good work for agriculture, or was not thor¬ 
oughly in sympathy with industrial life, I would try to go 
to one in some neighboring State where such was the case. 
On the whole it seems to me that Massachusetts, Michi¬ 
gan, New York, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, 
Texas and Dakota are doing such work. Quite likely other 
States are also, with whose work I am not so well ac¬ 
quainted. The new funds from Congress will have to be 
used more carefully in this direction, and I believe that in 
almost any State agricultural college the young man who 
really desires it can get excellent and valuable instruction 
THROUGH THE GENESEE VALLEY WITH A 
CAMERA. 
THE WADSWORTH CREAMERY AT AVON. 
In one of the August issues the private creamery of I«aac 
Budlong, of Scottsville, was described to readers of The 
Rural, and it certainly is perfect as far as it goes, but as 
this is an age of creameries, and anything new in the 
creamery line is interesting, I take pleasure in presenting 
The Rural New-Yorker family with cuts and a descrip¬ 
tion of the Wadsworth creamery at Avon, pronounced by 
those who have seen it the most expensive, convenient 
and best equipped creamery of its size in the State. Sev¬ 
eral years ago, Mr. Herbert Wadsworth erected a creamery, 
small in comparison with the present plant, that ran a 
short time and was then destroyed by fire. Having decided 
to rebuild at once, he determined, regardless of cost, to put 
up a creamery that would be a model of its kind in point 
of utility, without much respect to beauty of architecture, 
MAIN BUILDING OF THE AVON CREAMERY. Fig. 267. 
and surely the buildings in the cut ought to justify his ex¬ 
pectations. The main building, see Fig. 267, is 111 feet 
long by 30 in width, and the ice-house, shown at the left, 
is 60 by 32 feet. As observable at the right, a bank of con¬ 
siderable size rises up from the railway, and this bank 
forms the back-side of the creamery. All that can be seen 
of the buildings as one approaches them from the opposite 
side, are the iron roofs set seemingly on a basement, the 
smoke-stack and a graceful porte-cochere under which the 
farmers drive while unloading milk. 
The upper floor is cut up into three rooms, those at each 
end being used as cheese rooms in winter, and the central 
room as an office and weighing room. That portion of the 
milk that is intended to be worked into butter is poured 
into a funnel when weighed, and runs into the 1,800-quart 
vat in the butter room, Fig. 268. The cream is extracted 
from the milk with great rapidity by the separator process. 
The two De Laval separators in the foreground have a 
capacity of 750 quarts per hour each, and the arrangement 
is so perfect that the milk flows down to them, and then, 
after the cream has been separated, the skim-milk flows 
numerous points throughout the Eastern States. During 
the summer season cream is sold to ice-cream manufac¬ 
turers in the neighboring cities of Rochester and Buffalo, 
at prices which pay much better than if it were made into 
butter. 
If the Wadsworth butter is the best of its kind, one 
would naturally expect to find the cheese equally good in 
its class, and it is. There are such things as cheese and 
cheese, and in this day of adulteration and fraud it is re¬ 
freshing to taste of a pure cream cheese. Fig. 269 shows 
the cheese room, which is 25 by 30 feet. At the right, a 
part of the 3,000-quart sweet-milk vat is shown. This is 
connected with the office and weighing room above by a 
pipe, and holds the sweet milk for the manufacture ot 
cream cheese, of which about 500 pounds are made per day 
by the Cheddar process, and though not a connoisseur I 
consider it as fine cheese as was ever placed on the market 
in New York State. In the center is the 1,800-quart vat 
that holds the skim-milk as it 
runs from the separators in 
the butter room just beyond. 
The little machine on the vat 
is one of the latest improved 
curd mills. The skim-cheese 
is made in just 35 minutes by 
a new process invented by 
Mr. John Berrigan, the man¬ 
ager. This process has never 
been given to the public, al¬ 
though in time it must come 
into general use among pro¬ 
gressive cheese-makers, on ac¬ 
count of the superiority of 
the product. One of the New 
York State Dairy Commis¬ 
sioners sampled the new-pro¬ 
cess cheese while on a recent 
visit to the creamery, and 
pronounced it the best skim- 
milk cheese he had ever eaten. 
At the left is a Frazier com¬ 
bination gang press that 
presses 15 large cheeses and 25 small ones at one time, by 
an ingenious arrangement of machinery. A 10-horse 
power boiler furnishes steam to run the engine, and also 
for heating purposes in the winter. The inside of the 
creamery is ceiled throughout in pine finished in hard oil, 
and the floors of the main rooms on the ground floor are 
made of cement, sloping gently from the outside to the 
center where there is a hole opening into a sewer. Every 
morning the rooms are carefully washed out, and the 
water runs off through the sewers, carrying away all im¬ 
purities, and leaving the creamery sweet and clean, with 
absolutely no foul odors lingering near. 
This model creamery with its equipments cost over 
$11,000 and pays a fair dividend on the investment. All 
the work of butter and cheese making is done by two men, 
who also attend to the sales. Every day the creamery 
takes between 4,000 and 5,000 quarts of milk from over 400 
cows, and the daily output averages 800 pounds of butter 
and cheese. The establishment of the creamery was a 
great thing for the neighboring farmers. Many of them 
were about to give up farming on account of the low 
■ 
- ■ i. r - 
-V 
BUTTER-ROOM, AVON CREAMERY. Fig. 26S. 
CHEESE-ROOM, AVON CREAMERY. Fig. 269. 
In the whole sisterhood of natural, physical and veterin¬ 
ary sciences upon which the art of agriculture fundamen¬ 
tally rests. 
Finally it seems to me when I had thus got all the scien¬ 
tific knowledge, mental discipline and special skill the ag¬ 
ricultural college could give, I would seek a partnership 
with my father if he had a reasonably good farm, and him¬ 
self desired such partnership. I have scarcely ever seen a 
farm on which if the labor, skill and knowledge were 
doubled the cash receipts would not be more than doubled; 
provided its owners took and lived up to the pledge Mr. 
Terry took so long ago and has lived up to so well—“to 
do everything undertaken on the farm in the best way he 
knew—or could learn how.” The motto of our college is 
“ Science with Practice.” Such a young farmer would be a 
living embodiment of this motto. 
Frequently one man’s loss is another’s gain. The failure 
of the fruit crops in many Eastern States and the con¬ 
sequent increase in prices obtained by California shippers 
the present season illustrate this quite forcibly. Such 
prices would have been impossible in an ordinary season. 
out into the 1,800 quart vat and thence into the cheese 
room adjoining. A cream vat on wheels stands near tho 
separators while they are in operation, and is large enough 
to hold all the cream from one day’s milk. After it 
has been extracted, the vat is drawn into the refrigerator, 
where the cream is allowed to ripen over-night. In the 
morning it is churned in a power barrel churn holding 60 
gallons, at a temperature of 60 degrees. When the butter 
is in the granular state it is carefully washed and removed 
to the refrigerator, and there worked by .hand. There is 
no such thing as a butter-worker in the building. Mr. 
Berrigan, the Superintendent, believes that it is utterly im¬ 
possible to make the best grade of butter without haud 
manipulation, and his patrons seem to approve of his 
method, for the average price of Wadsworth butter last 
season was 28 cents per pound. Nearly all of it is made 
into pound prints, and is kept in the ice chest nntil it is ship¬ 
ped the next morning. The refrigerator is 10 by 30 feet, and 
large enough to hold several thousand pounds of butter, 
but there is such a demand for the latter among regular 
customers that rartly is any held over 24 hours. At present 
about 200 pounds of butter are made a day, and it is sold at 
prices for grain and beef when the creamery came to their 
rescue. The average price paid per quart for last season 
was two cents, and even at that seemingly low figure there 
was a good margin of profit to the dairymen. A record of 
the milk from each herd was kept, for a year by the mana¬ 
ger, and from his books I learn that the lowest average of 
any herd was $42.30 per cow, while one man had 22 cows 
that brought nim in $60 apiece. To illustrate the aid that 
the creamery has been to tenant farmers in the vicinity, I 
will quote the words of one man who rents a 300-acre farm. 
“ For the last three years before I began to sell milk, I could 
barely make enough to pay my rent; but last year my 30 
cows paid my rent and the wages of one hired man, and I 
sold just as much grain and other products off the farm as 
I did before l kept cows.” The thanks of the many farm¬ 
ers whom this creamery has helped into a lucrative busi¬ 
ness are due to Mr. Herbert Wadsworth, its enterprising 
owner. kdwakd f. dibble. 
Lima, N. Y.__ 
Breed and feed are strong partners. Either is a power 
alone ; combined they are irresistible. 
