98 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
The milk, pure, sweet, clean and cool, 
should be heated rather quickly, but evenly, to 
82° in warm weather, and 8G° in cool weather. 
The coloring, which should be selected for its 
fineness and purity, rather than for its cheap¬ 
ness, is then added, and after this sufficient pre¬ 
pared rennet, (thoroughly incorporating it with 
the mass,) to begin coagulation in ten to 
fifteen minutes, and form a firm curd in half an 
hour to an hour, gently agitating the milk until 
it begins to thicken. The rennets should be 
taken from healthy calves, not less than three or 
four days old, cleaned by wiping and picking 
instead of washing, thoroughly rubbed with 
the purest salt outside and in, and packed in 
stone jars—never in wood. They should be 
prepared for use by soaking and rubbing in 
whey, first boiled and skimmed, and the prepa¬ 
ration carefully strained into a clean stone jar. 
As soon as the curd will break square and 
clean across the finger, the cutting should begin. 
The knife recently invented for cutting the curd 
horizontally should be first used ; and then the 
curd should be cut perpendicularly with a gang 
of blades standing not over a quarter of an inch 
apart. Both these cuttings should be length¬ 
wise of the vat, and will leave the curd in long 
strips about a quarter of an inch thick and 
three quarters of an inch wide. The ob¬ 
ject is to facilitate the separation of the whey, 
which the horizontal cutting does more effectu¬ 
ally than the perpendicular, since the whey col¬ 
lects in little tubular cells, which, when viewed 
with a microscope, look like fine needles stand¬ 
ing upright throughout the mass. The hori¬ 
zontal cutting severs them crosswise, while the 
perpendicular splits only a few of them. As 
soon as the whey has exuded enough to nearly 
cover the surface of the curd, cross-cutting 
should commence, and be continued until the 
whole is as fine as kernels of corn, or beechnuts. 
Then apply the heat and raise the temperature 
steadily and expeditiously to 98° or 100°, as is 
preferred, constantly but carefully stirring the 
mass with a rake to keep it from packing—the 
more effectually this is done, the better—and 
the stirring must be continued, at short inter¬ 
vals, so as to keep the pieces loose and free, 
until the curd is ready to dip. 
It is very essential that all the whey should 
be expelled from the pieces of curd by the 
action of the heat and rennet, so that, when 
mashed by rubbing between the thumb and fin¬ 
gers, they will look mealy and dry. This is 
what cheese-makers would call thoroughly 
“cooked” or “scalded”—and it cannot be pro¬ 
perly done unless the curd is cut fine, and the 
heat is kept up till this condition is attained. 
When the whey begins to change, or become 
a little sour, it should be at once drawn off and 
the curd stirred and cooled to at least 90°. Then 
dip and salt with four to five ounces of Onon¬ 
daga “ factory filled” to each hundred pounds of 
milk worked up. Thoroughly incorporate this 
with the curd, which should be put to press at 
a temperature of about 80°. Press lightly at 
first, steadily following up the pressure, until 
the whey is completely expelled and the whole 
is firmly set together. When the pressing is 
finished, put the cheese in an airy, clean, well- 
ventilated drying room, so constructed that the 
temperature can be kept at 70° to 80°, and if 
everything has been thoroughly done, at the end 
of thirty days the maker can have the satisfac¬ 
tion of “trying” a fine-textured, firm, mild, 
clean-flavored cheese. 
This is as things should be. They often are 
as they should not be. Milk is often sour or 
tainted when it reaches the factory. Sometimes 
the night’s milk does not keep as well as it 
ought, in hot weather. Tainted milk is the 
chief cause of porous cheese; sour milk causes 
a great waste of butter. When caught with 
either of these objectionable articles, it is impor¬ 
tant to know the best that can be done with 
them, but it is unreasonable to expect them to 
make as good cheese as perfectly sweet milk. 
If milk is tainted, the sooner it is heated, 
set and scalded, the better. Additional heat of 
three to five degrees, in this case, will prove 
beneficial. The “ cooking” checks decompo¬ 
sition and the further development of gases. 
But, in addition, the lactic acid should be al¬ 
lowed to fully develop in the whey, making it 
unmistakably sour, before being drawn off. 
This acid curdles or pickles the albuminous 
matter, which is believed to give the offensive 
odor peculiar to tainted milk. When the whey 
is drawn off, the curd should be cooled down 
to 80°, then dipped, salted and put to press, 
under at first light, but gradually increasing 
pressure. The curing requires no particular 
care, save to puncture the swelled places which 
may appear on the cheese, and let out the gas. 
Such cheeses are generally buttery and rich, but 
do not keep very well for a length of time. 
When milk is rather old or a little sour, the 
sooner every stage of the process is gone through 
with, the better—for the more time there is con¬ 
sumed, the more acid is developed and the 
greater the waste. The effect of the acid is to 
destroy the coverings of the globules of butter, 
allowing the butter to escape and run off with 
the whey. In sweet milk, these coverings are 
smooth and perfect, and will bear a temperature 
of even 170°, without rupturing and freeing the 
butter. But when the milk is sour, the sacks 
containing the globules of butter are rough and 
broken, and are destroyed by a heat much less 
than that necessary for the manufacture of 
cheese. Hence, the trouble with sour milk is 
to give the rennet and heat sufficient time to do 
their work of separating the cheese from the 
whey, the acid compelling the operator to take 
out the curd underdone, the consequence of 
which is a “ leaky” as well as a sour cheese— 
and almost every sour cheese is a leaky one. It 
will be seen, therefore, that the more rapidly the 
heat is run up, the better—even to the temper¬ 
ature of 105' or 10G°—the main object being to 
“ cook” the curd, too much acid being in al¬ 
ready. Of course, the cooler the curd is put to 
press and the more carefully it is pressed, the 
less the waste of butter, which is likely to be 
enough to produce a dry cheese, under the best 
that can be done. The writer has seen a very 
fair quality of cheese made from nearly loppered 
milk, the whole process of setting, cutting, 
scalding, and dipping, not occupying more than 
half to three-quarters of an hour. There is no 
trouble in keeping a sour cheese almost any 
length of time. 
The practice in many factories is to heat up a 
curd very slowly, some stopping at a certain 
point, and letting it stand to—what? Few 
have any idea what; but the result is, if the 
milk is not very sweet, that the acid develops 
before the heat and rennet have done their • 
work, and the choice is between a sour cheese 
and one from which the whey is imperfectly 
separated and is likely to be bad-flavored. 
Many, too, dip the curds too soft, with the idea 
of producing a greater weight of cheese ; and to 
this foolish ambition to please the patrons with 
a “ big average,” may be attributed much of the 
bad flavor complained of. But unless the 
cheese is marketed before it is thoroughly cured, 
no greater weight will be secured; and if thus 
secured, a minute of the loss by shrinkage is 
made of every lot of cheese, and that will be 
taken into consideration by the dealer the next 
time he visits a factory noted for selling green 
cheese—so that what is gained in weight, is ulti¬ 
mately lost in quality, price, and reputation. 
We emphatically protest against pig-styes 
around factories, and against imperfect troughs 
or sewers to conduct off the whey and slops— 
which being allowed to collect and rot, and ex¬ 
hale their bad odors under, around, and through 
the factory, taint the cheese, poison the air 
and everything and everybody it envelops. 
Timber Culture—The Pine. 
BY D. C. SCOFIELD, ELGIN, ILL. 
The Pine forests which once existed along the 
valleys of the Hudson and its tributaries, the 
Delaware and Susquehannah, have been swept 
away, mainly within the last sixty years, to sup¬ 
ply the markets of our seaboard. Lumbermen 
have resorted to the vast forests of Maine, Can¬ 
ada, and our Northwestern border, too, and not¬ 
withstanding the greatness of the supply, the in¬ 
creasing demand will soon use up what now 
would seem to be an exhaustless resource. The 
question already is seriously asked : “ What is to 
be the substitute which will equal Pine timber 
in value?” We reply, there is none. Then 
what is the duty of this generation in regard to 
this matter? We say, plant Pine timber and 
make it a farm crop. On the same principle that 
the provident father provides for the present 
luxury and future wants of his household, let 
the men of this time provide for the necessities 
of future generations. A great and wise people 
are looking to a glorious future; hence they 
secure the most durable material within their 
reach, for their public edifices, State-houses 
and churches. So also it becomes such a people 
to provide for the future supply of timber. This 
may be done by individual enterprise, by Gov¬ 
ernment, or by both. The most natural and eco¬ 
nomical method is, that every farmer set apart 
a portion of his laud for a timber plantation. It 
may be set in a belt for protection to ex¬ 
posed grounds against the severities of winter, 
or in square and more compact bodies, as may 
suit his taste or convenience. Unlike many 
other varieties of American timber, the Pine does 
not sprout from the roots, and can only be re¬ 
produced by planting the seed. 
It is no longer doubtful whether we can raise 
Pine and other timber with the same certainty 
and in the same manner as we do apple and 
other fruit trees. It has been done, it is being 
done, and it may be done to any desirable extent. 
To prove that it has been done we have only to 
refer to the cases where trees have been planted 
to beautify pleasure grounds or afford a shade to 
springs of water. This evidence is sufficient for 
our purpose, for what has been accomplished on 
a small scale may be done on a large one. A 
Pine tree is now standing in the State of New 
York, not fifty miles from the metropolis, that 
when set in 1813 was a small plant not two feet 
in bight; it now has a diameter of more than 
three feet and a bight of nearly eight feet. 
Another Pine tree is standing (unless recently 
removed) in Fairfield County, Ct., nearly a hun¬ 
dred feet in hight, more than three feetin diame¬ 
ter at its base and about one foot in diameter 
at the hight of seventy feet. It was planted 
there, a small tree, about the close of the Revolu¬ 
tionary war. In the County of Albany, N. Y., 
a Pine tree was cut in the year 1S14 measuring 
more than two and a half feet in diameter at its 
