LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, | Shelf. R 65 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. be ASSOUTATED DAIRY EM: ERE AMERIES CREAMERY BUTTER |, 0 DAIRY HOUSES AND THE BEST BUTTER. FY lan y fs i 2 _ => : ; Yo o> 5 ahead & LANCASTER, PA. So... ZAM & Ce... 1879. (> Copyright, 1879, S. H. ZAHM & CO. oo ____ STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY THE INQUIRER P. & P. co., LANCASTER, PA. Pon bebe: -F any among those who make and sell, or buy and eat, the golden preducts of the dairy, may think it worth their while to look into these pages, they are reminded that the aim, as the title indicates, is to present these leading fea- tures: the making of butter at creameries, the production of cheese by the factory system, and the labor-saving methods *now within the reach of every dairyman and dairywoman in the land. Many of those who make our butter and cheese, though they have not themselves departed from the earlier ways, are yet well aware of the changing processes of these later years, and of the wonderful results brought about by the system of associated effort on the part of dairymen elsewhere ; to others it is all familiar as an oft-told tale; for years they have helped through the whole of it, they have tested every plan which has promised to benefit them, have sifted what was of value and settled on that best suited to their wants. Again, there are those who are conscious of the change mainly as they feel it in the lessened prices they are receiving for their products. If any among them all shall find anything which will be of use in producing a better article at less cost of time and labor, or having already reached the highest re- sults, if it will show them how they can aid their neighbors without loss to themselves, the charge of uselessness, at least, cannot be brought against our little work. The dealer in these articles, from the position he occu- pies in relation to the other two interested classes, has often (iii) iv | PREFACE. opportunities for acquiring information not possessed by them ; but even he, perhaps, may find an idea here and. there which will suggest how the interests of all concerned may be ad- vanced. While it is sometimes true that the less we know about the production of that which we eat the better it will be relished, there will be found here, in the plain descriptions of the mod- ern mode of manufacturing, nothing, it is hoped, that may tend to dull any one’s appetite for these standard articles, which are, when properly made, at once toothsome luxuries and substantial additions to the bill of fare. Acknowledging our obligations to those who have kindly given descriptions of their processes and apparatus, and to — the authors from whom we have quoted, it may not be amiss to add, that those who wish to know more about the subjects treated, will find much in regard to almost every- thing connected with dairying, from the pens of its leading exponents, in the voluminous reports of the Dairy Associa- tions of the various States where the industry is prominent, and especially in those of the American Dairymen’s Associa- tion, from its organization to the present time. April, 1879. Vi. CONTENTS. PAGE. . INTRODUCTORY, : : Z . ° < - ORIGIN AND GROWTH, . . ° - . ° : - 9 . FOR AND AGAINST, . : ° e . ° ° oi0 How tec STart, . 5 = ° : ° ° ° 23 . CREAMERS AND OTHER APPARATUS,. “ : = . 27 . METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES AND MAKING CREAMERY BUTTER, - 5 = : - - 36 . CHEESE AND CHEESE MAKING, . 2 - e . a 52 OUR DAIRY HOUSES, - - e ° P ° . 63 Tue Best Butter, - : - ° . . e 69 Conclusion, . . : . 3 ° e aust ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. . if INTRODUCTORY. O you ask, ‘‘ What is a creamery?’’ Let me tell you here—or better, come with me andsee. We will look at the surroundings first. Here are farms on all sides, and every one has its herd of cows. ‘The cow is the basis of the cream- ery, and there are three hundred or more on the farms within two miles; that one there has ten, the next one four; on that large one yonder there are fifty. This one on the other side of the road has twenty-eight—six Jerseys, five Holstein, and the rest we call natives, but they are none the worse for that. We are almost there now; it is that plain-looking building, out of which the spring seems to come. This man with the milk cans on his wagon is going there too. ‘*What large cans they are!’’ Yes, those of the city milk dealer would look small beside them. But here it is, we will go inside. There is not much to be seen; four huge pans—three of them are full of milk, and the cans we saw on the wagon just now are being emptied into the fourth. One of these pans is filled every time the cows are milked ; that one at the end has yesterday morning’s milk; the cream is thick on the top of it. The next ane ‘was filled yesterday evening, this one this morning, and the last one now. Each one holds fifteen hundred quarts of milk, over three thousand pounds. Besides those pipes full (7) 8 ASSOCIATED DAIRVING. of spring water and this delightfully cool air, there is not much in this room, and we will go to the next. The water in the pool here is cold, and those deep round cans in it are full of cream; there is a churn and a butter worker, and these boxes and tubs are full of butter, and there is more in the cellar below. In that room at the end they make cheese. Now we can go. ‘*But you have not told us what a creamery is. We will get our Webster and look for a definition.”’ You will not find it there. It is one of the new words awaiting its turn to go into the next revised edition. It was not common enough fifteen years ago to come under the eye of the lexicographer. To-day it is to be found in every agricultural journal, and in almost every country newspaper that has market reports. But to many persons it conveys rather an uncertain meaning. ‘They see that creamers and creameries are being discussed, and that creamery butter sells for more than any other. If they ask the butter dealer what tt is, he will answer, ‘‘ The best butter that Isell.”’ If they ask the maker of fancy dairy butter from June grass and white clover hay, he says, ‘‘It is the butter that is hurting my business, but it is not as good as mine.”’ It may strike the patrons of some of the older of these in stitutions as odd, that any one should not know anything about what, to them is as familiar as the houses in which they live. There are, however, a good many people who do not. To these we would say, A creamery 1s an establishment where the milk from a neighborhood is collected, and butter and theese made from tt. At fast the name was only applied where both butter and cheese were made. When butter alone was made it was a butter factory; when cheese alone, a cheese factory. But ORIGIN AND GROWTH. 9 latterly, it is given when only butter is made from the milk gathered in from the farms around. The milk depots where milk is collected and shipped to the city markets bear the appellation—sometimes, and of late all the new fix- tures for setting milk for cream are called creamers, and it naturally follows that the place where they are brought to- gether and used will be a creamery. ‘‘ Old Creamer’’ was a pet name for one of the best cows the country ever held, and cream, the root of them all, does not every one of us know what that is? Creameries are part of a system which has revolutionized dairying in many sections of our country within the last quar- ter of a century, and the origin, history and bearings of which are well worth all the attention we can give them in these pages. ORIGIN AND GROWTH. At first glance it may seem strange that a// of the five thou- sand creameries, butter factories and cheese factories in the United States, with the exception of scarcely two hundred, are north of latitude forty-one, and between the Hudson and the Missouri, while of the eleven million cows which the country probably now contains, fully seven million chew the cud and give milk outside of these limits. These could supply mink enough to run thirty thousand establishments, with over two hundred cows to each. It is easy to see why there are none in those sections where only a single cow or half-a-dozen are kept on a place, mainly for the milk and butter they furnish for home use, where the houses are far apart and the roads often not good; but it is not so easy to understand why there are as yet none in others where cows are plenty and the farms small. In New York, which has more creameries and factor- ies than any other State, the dairymen who support them I* ) fe) ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. keep on an average but thirteen cows. This is less than the average in many other localities, and the wonder is that in these some plan of handling the milk, or at least the cream, at one point under the eye of one skilled person, has not Jong ago been devised, and thus a uniformity and improved quality of product secured that will hardly be attained so long as the work must be done by many hands overburdened by the num- berless tasks that come to the workers on a farm. When the idea first suggested itself to those who would be most inter- ested and benefited by it, it is hard to guess, but it must have occurred to more than one farmer and farmer’s wife and dairymaid long before the first factory was built. The peasants of Switzerland and some other parts of Europe have for a long time not only driven their cows and goats and sheep together and pastured them through the sum- mer under the care of one of their number, but they have had the milk made into cheese in common and divided among the owners in proportion to the number of animals each one had in the common herd or flock. With them it was a necessity ; poor and possessed of but a few cows, they could not individ- ually make cheese of the kind for which their wealthier neigh- bors were finding a profitable sale; but by uniting they were able to make the same kind and find a market, which each could not have done alone, for it must be remembered that the poor man’s single cow or scanty flock will not give milk enough in a day to make a Swiss cheese. In this country, Mr. A. Picket, of Jefferson county, Wis- consin, seems to have been one of the first to carry into prac- tice the idea of co-operation in cheese-making. From a paper read before the Wisconsin Dairyman’s Association, by Mr. J. G. Picket, we extract the following account of this early effort: ORIGIN AND GROWTH. PI ‘The pioneer settlers of Wisconsin had arrived at that point of refinement when they longed for cheese. My father saw the opportunity, and so in the spring of 1841 set about supplying the demand. He had driven from Ohio ten cows, but he was satisfied that with that number he could not sup- ply the demand. There were no cows to be bought, and had there been any for sale there was no money to pay for them. The idea suggested itself to my mother, Why not co-operate with our neighbors in cheese-making? It was a capital and original idea, and was at once adopted by the head of the family. ‘