38 
ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
in the upper story. In the summer of 1875 he bought eggs sufficient to pack 
2 000 barrels. These were packed in chaff and cut straw and stored in this 
refrigerator till winter, when they were marketed fresh and good. Several 
thousand turkeys were bought during the winter, and after being frozen 
were stored in this refrigerator till May, when they were marketed in fine 
condition. Apples stored in it in October, 1875, are to-day as sound as when 
picked from the trees. A bag of lemons is also shown which has been on 
storage all summer and the fruit is perfectly preserved. 
This aticle is probably an advertisement and exaggerates somewhat, yet 
I have no doubt but that butter may be kept in this way below 50°, and 
that would aid very greatly the keeping of summer butter for winter use. 
During our nine years’ residence in Iowa, it was our practice to buy 
(about the first week of June) butter sufficient to last us a year. My wife 
would pack it in stone jars with a little brine on top of the butter. The 
bottom of our cellar was gravel and I used to set them down in the gravel, 
so that the top of the jars was but little above the cellar bottom, and we 
never had a jar of poor butter. One spring we had a jar left over, and I 
sold it to the same merchant I bought it of—buying at fifteen and selling at 
thirty cents. And one season we summered over a surplus jar and used it 
the second winter in February and March, and it was good. Gen. Wilson, 
at that time editor of the Iowa Homestead , took tea with us one evening 
while we were using that butter, and remarked two or three times during 
the meal, “What beautiful butter you have. Why, I can buy no such 
butter as this in Des Moines.” The fact that summer butter has been kept 
fresh and sweet for winter use is positive proof that it can be so kept. 
To recapitulate : The four essentials for preserving summer butter for 
winter use or markets, are i It must be well made. It must be salted with 
pure salt. It must be so packed as to entirely exclude the air. It must be 
kept at a low temperature. If any one of these four conditions are wanting 
your butter will not keep. Yet after all I believe the best way to keep 
summer butter for winter use is to keep it in the grasses and the grains you 
provide for your dairy stock, until near the time you wish to market it. 
Kept in this way it will never become strong. 
J. Smallwood, Freeport, packed 200 pounds in six-gallon 
jars; filled nearly full, and then completed with salt; when 
done, he buried the whole in the ground one foot deep. Opened 
it last Monday. The freshness was gone, but it was not 
ruined; sold the most of it. Would like to hear fiom others. 
Dr. Tefft said it was a well known fact that butter was 
spoiled by a vegetable growth of spores. The secret of keep¬ 
ing butter was to put it where spores could not reach it. Fresh 
meats could be preserved by placing in an air-tight box, then 
exhaust the air, and when it enters let it pass through cotton 
