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JOHN V. BACOT, Jr.
2107 GENESEE STREET ^^>^

UTICA, N. Y.

From the collection of the

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San Francisco, California
2006

Digitized by the Internet Archive

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http://www.archive.org/details/aboutfarmOOwhiprich

ABOUT THE FARM

AN ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTION OF THE
NEW BOSTON DAIRY AND OTHER IN-
DUSTRIES AT VALLEY VIEW, MUZZEY,
AND HUTCHINSON FARMS, WHICH
ARE A PART OF THE SUPPLY
DEPARTMENT OF YOUNG'S
HOTEL, PARKER HOUSE,
AND HOTEL TOURAINE

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PRINTED FOR

J. R. WHIPPLE COMPANY

BOSTON, MASS.

Copyright, 1910,
By J. R. Whipple Company

A II rights reserved

PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN,

BOOK WRITTEN, ARRANGED, AND PRINTED

UNDER DIRECTION OF

WALTON ADVERTISING AND PRINTING CO., BOSTON, MASS,

HIS BOOK is presented to you with the
compliments of J. R. Whipple Company,
proprietor of Young's Hotel, Parker House,
and Hotel Touraine, Boston, and owner of
the New Boston Dairy, Valley View, Muzzey, and
Hutchinson Farms, New Boston, New Hampshire.

ABOUT THE FARM

HE GUEST at the Hotel Touraine, Parker
House, or Young's Hotel, Boston, who
calls for an order of milk, receives it in
a glass bottle sealed with a metal cap,
and upon the cap as well as upon the
3ottle is stamped "J. R. Whipple Co. Dairy, New
Boston, N.H."

Were the guest to follow the empty bottle back to
the place whence it came, he would arrive at the little
village of New Boston among the hills of lower New
Hampshire, and there, stretched over the slopes and val-
leys about the town and along the foaming Piscataquog
River, he would see the broad, fertile pastures and trim,
substantial buildings of Valley View Farm. This, the
Muzzey, Hutchinson, and several adjoining farms are
the property of J. R. Whipple Company, which manages
the Parker House, Young's Hotel, and Hotel Touraine.
The sole purpose of the Farms is to supply these hotels
with the best table milk, cream, butter, eggs, poultry,
pork, hams, and sausages. It has always been the en-
deavor of the hotel management to secure the most
delicious food products that the markets of Boston and
New York afford. Not content, however, with the best
the market could furnish, Mr. Whipple determined some
years ago to have his own dairy farm, and the enterprise
was established, which now comprises twenty -five hun-
dred or more acres. It is described and illustrated in
this book.

[ 5 ]

HE FARM is divided into three departments :
the Dairy, the Piggery, and the Hennery, of
which the first is most important, although
each of the other two receives the same scru-
pulous care. While there are these three main depart-
ments, there should be included, perhaps, a fourth, the
Farming Department. The Dairy has to do with milking
the cows, with the care of the milk, and with the making
of butter; the Piggery, with the breeding and care of the
pigs, and with their slaughter and preparation for ship-
ment to the Hotels; the Hennery, with raising chickens
and eggs. The Farming Department caters to all three.
Its function is to produce feed for stock and to provide
horses and wagons for the many requirements of the dairy
business. Thirty horses and thirty -five wagons and hay-
racks, to say nothing of mowing machines, horse-rakes,
machinery for ice-cutting, and two portable gasoline en-
gines, are required.

[ 6 1

VALLEY VIEW FARM-HOUSE AND BARN FOR HORSES.

A SLIGHT DISAGREEMENT.

GENERAL VIEW OF NEW BOSTON AND VAl

VIEW FARM, FROM A NEAR-BY HILL.

HE CHIEF products of the Farm are hay,
fodder corn, and apples. The process of mak-
ing hay requires no description, although it
is one of the most attractive aspects of farm
work, at least to the onlooker. A word of explanation
as to the treatment of the corn may not be out of place.
The Western corn that is planted grows wonderfully in
the cultivated soil of the various fields, oftentimes reach-
ing a height of twelve feet. The corn is cut while green
and full of juice, preferably before the first frost, by
means of a horse reaper, which not only cuts the corn-
stalks off close to the ground, but also binds them into
bundles, which are easily loaded into wagons and readily
handled later. This reaper is a great time-saver over
the old method of cutting the stalks by hand with a sickle.
The corn-stalks are not fed whole to the cattle, but are
cut up while green — stalks, juicy cobs, and leaves — into
small pieces by a machine run by a gasoline engine. By
means of a strong blower connected with the cutting
machine these pieces of corn-stalks are blown through a
movable metal tube to the top of the receptacle built to
receive and store them. These receptacles are either
square or round, about thirty feet high and fifty feet in
perimeter. They are built adjoining each barn, so that
the fodder may be easily reached the whole winter. This
fodder keeps green and moist all winter. It is much
relished by the cows and young stock. Corn fodder thus
cut and stored is called ensilage; the receptacle in which
it is stored, a silo.

[ 11 ]

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MOWING MACHINES AT WORK.

HAYING SCENE.

A GOOD LOAD.

HORSE RAKES AT WORK.

REAPING CORN BY HAND.

LOADING BUNDLES OF STALKS INTO WAGONS.

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HERE is one other product of the Farm of con-
siderable importance. This is vinegar. Each
year enough cider is made to supply the
hotels with pure cider vinegar. This cider
is made in a mill of modern construction. The power
used is a gasoline engine. The room in which it is made
is of concrete. The men while at work wear clean white
suits, and every care is taken to have a product free from
any impurity. The cider is stored in barrels in a concrete
cellar for about two years. It is then turned into large
vats, and in three years from the time of making is clear
pure vinegar.

SACKS OF CIDER APPLES IN THE LOFT OVER THE CIDER-PRESS.

The apples are turned through a hole in the floor into a grinder, and the ground apples
then drop to the cider-press.

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HE DAIRY BUSINESS, of course, is largely
dependent on an ample supply of ice. It is
the duty of the Farm Superintendent to sup-
ply this ice. An artificial pond, fed by a brook
from the hills, is the source of the supply. Three ice-
houses furnish the storage. A gasoline portable engine
and fifty men on the pond supply the power, so that,
after the ice is cut into cakes by the horse ploughs, a
continuous stream of cakes is delivered to the houses,
and all are filled in about two days.

MARKING ICE INTO SQUARES WITH HORSE PLOUGHS.

SEPARATING LONG SLABS OF ICE WHICH HAVE BEEN MARKED
INTO SQUARES BY PLOUGHS.

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HE main business of a dairy farm, however, is
not to make cider and harvest ice, but to sup-
ply milk. The general farm work is either
dependent on this main purpose or else sub-
ordinate to it.

Only finely bred Holsteins, noted for their vigor and
milk-producing qualities, and the best-blooded Guern-
seys compose the herd of three hundred and fifty
cattle that is the source of the milk supply. The man-
agement of the Farm is constantly on the lookout for
the best cows, and much time and expense are given to
the locating and securing of fine stock. All of the cows,
therefore, are the choicest of their breed, and the care
and nourishment they receive is that laid down by the
most scientific dairy farming.

BARN FOR HOLSTEIN CATTLE.
One hundred are kept here.

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HOLSTKIN BUM,, MKRCKDKS DK KOL PRINCE, NO. 36562.

GRADE HOLSTEIN COW.

GRADE HOLSTEIN COW WITH CALF.

GRADE HOLSTEIN COW.

IMPORTED GLIiUNSEY COW, IMP. GISTANA II., NO. 21338.
Bred by T. M. LePelley, Island of Guernsey.

IMPORTED GUERNSEY COW, IMP. GOLDEN MAY V. DU GRON, NO. 21269.
Bred by Joliii Bourgaise, Island of Guernsey.

UT, in order to produce pure milk, it is neces-
sary to care for these cows in the proper
manner and to draw their milk in a sanitary-
way. The herds are inspected monthly by
a reliable veterinary surgeon. The cows are carefully
groomed before each milking, and their heads are then
tied, so that they cannot lie down and soil themselves
again. The udders of the cows are wiped with a clean
damp cloth before each milking. The men who milk wear
white duck suits, which they put on especially for milk-
ing and wear at no other time. They are required to
wash their hands after each cow that they milk. Each
man is given a clean towel. A locker-room furnished
with wash-basins and a shower-bath is provided for the
milkers.

The pails into which the milk is received were espe-
cially designed and made for the New Boston Dairy.
Two false rims fit in the top, and placed between these
rims, so that they perfectly cover the mouth of the pail,
are two sheets of antiseptic gauze between which are
layers of sterilized absorbent cotton. As the milk can be
received into the pails only through the gauze and absorb-
ent cotton, it is impossible for any impurities to contam-
inate the milk. These precautions alone supply milk of
above the average quality, as shown by careful tests
carried on for us. In order, however, to furnish the very
best possible milk for drinking purposes, a special barn
of concrete has been constructed. All hay is kept in a
separate building, the grain in a room by itself, the cows
in a stable of their own. The building is very carefully
ventilated and is heated by steam. The bedding used is
fine, dry sawdust, which absorbs all moisture and pre-
vents the slightest odor.

[ 29 ]

FTER the milk is drawn into one of the pails
that have been described, it is immediately
carried into the milk-room, which is separated
by self-closing doors from the cow stable. Here
it is weighed, and a careful record is kept of the amount
of milk given by each cow and also of the richness of the
milk. Twice each morning and twice each evening the
milk is sent to the Creamery, where it is immediately
cooled and bottled. All of the milk shipped to the Hotels
for drinking or for table milk comes from the Guernsey
cows housed in this new cement stable; but not all of the
milk produced at the various farms forming a part of the
New Boston Dairy is bottled for table use. A large part
goes to the Creamery, to be sent to the Hotels as cooking
milk and as cream and butter.

[ 30 ]

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MILK-ROOM.

Men are weighing the milk just drawn, recording tlie weight, and pouring from a pail
into a cooler. Thi.s milk is sent in a wagon twice during each milking to the Creamery.
The room connects with the cow stable, but is shut off by a self-closing door. The d(K)r
is shown in the picture.

LOCKER-ROOM FOR MEN. SHOWER BATH IN THE CORNER.

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OWEVER, tlie farms owned by the Company,
even with their large herds, are insufficient
to supply all the milk necessary for furnish-
ing cream and butter for the Hotels. Much
is bought from the neighboring farmers. This milk is ac-
cepted only from such farmers as comply in every respect
with the rules of the Boston Board of Health. Their herds
are inspected, and no milk is taken of them if there is any
illness in the family of the owner. The farmers who sup-
ply milk and cream to the Dairy are required to use the
special pails and to milk through sterilized gauze and
cotton. In order to be sure that this rule is complied with,
they must return each day, when they deliver their milk,
the gauze and cotton used for milking. This is immedi-
ately destroyed.

FARMERS DELIVERING MILK AT THE CREAMERY.

HE CREAMERY is quite detached from the
other buildings, and stands in a little park
of elms, shrubs, and grass on the bank of the
Piscataquog River. The interior is entirely of
concrete, white glazed tile, and iron. An expert dairyman
with trained assistants is in charge of the Creamery. The
utmost cleanliness is required from every one. All wear
spotless white suits, which they put on daily before be-
ginning their work.

Upon arrival at the Creamery the milk is at once car-
ried into the receiving-room, whence it is poured into the
mixing vats that mingle the different cows' milk, so as to
produce a uniform grade of milk. There are three vats,
one for the milk from which the cream is to be separated.
These vats are in an enclosed room made of white glazed
tile. The milk is poured into the vats through a spout
which goes through the wall. Before mixing, however, a
sample of each delivery of milk is taken, and this sample
is tested for the amount of butter fat it contains. From
its mixing vat the milk from the Guernsey cows runs to a
special cooler, and is immediately bottled. The cooler and
bottling machine is in a room below the mixingvats. This
room is also made of white glazed tile. The milk does not
have to be handled by any one except to pour it into the
vats, and, as the milk-rooms are enclosed and kept per-
fectly clean, there is no possibility of any impurity reach-
ing the milk after it comes to the Creamery.

[ 39 ]

HE GENERAL supply of milk goes through
the spouts to another vat in the milking-
room. A part of it is cooled immediately, and
drawn into large cans for use as cooking milk.
A part is warmed by discs heated by steam, and runs
through a spout to the separators where the cream is
separated. The cream goes from the separator through a
spout in the wall to a special cooler in the enclosed bot-
tling-room. Part of this cream is shipped to the Hotels as
cream: another part is carried to the upper floor of the
Creamery, and is turned into the cream-tempering vats,
which are kept in an enclosed room of white tile. When
the cream is sufficiently old, it is drawn through a spout
to the churns in a room below, where it is made into butter.
The butter is pressed into blocks, which are moulded into
cubes of fours. It then goes to the refrigerating rooms to
await shipment in a special refrigerator car which daily
carries the milk and other farm products to the Hotels in
Boston. The skim milk is conveyed in a tank wagon to
the Piggery at the other end of the Farm.

All the bottles and cans which are used to hold milk are
scalded, scoured, scrubbed, and sterilized by specially
constructed machinery after they have been emptied and
before they are again used.

[ 40 ]

POURING MILK INTO THE VATS.
The cans of milk are taken from the wagons, as shown in a previous picture. The milk
is then poured through a spout into the vats in an enclosed room. Samples of each farmer's
milk are taken to be tested.

INTERIOR OF IHE MILK-ROOM.

The men in the previous picture are pouring the milk which is seen running into the

vats. This room is of glazed white tile.

EXTERIOR OF THE MILK-ROOM FROM THE SIDE OPPOSITE TO
THAT WHERE THE MILK IS RECEIVED.

BOTTLI NO-ROOM.
The bottling-room is under tliat in which the vats are located. The
milk for table use runs through spouts from the vats to a sijecial cooler
and is immediately bottled. This bottling and cooling room is of glazed
white tile.

SOME OF THE MILK FROM THE VATS IS NOT USED FOR BOTTLINO, BUT
RUNS TO SEPARATORS WHERE THE CREAM IS EXTRACTED.

COOLING MILK FOR CANS.
The cream from the separators goes through a spout to a cooler in the bottling-room and
is drawn into cans. Tliis is sliown on the right liand. On the left, milk from the vats in
the room above is being cooled and drawn into cans for shipment as cooking milk.

CREAM TEMPERING ROOM.
That part of the cream not shipped to the hotels is taken from the cooling-room to vats
for tempering the cream to lie made into butter. This room is on the floor above the
cooling-room. It is made of white glazed tile.

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THE BUTTER BEING WORKED AND PRINTED.

WASHING AND STEAMING BOTTLES.

WASHING CANS AND STOPPERS WITH HOT WATER AND STEAM JET.

SHIPPING PRODUCTS FROM THE CREAMERY.

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EXT to the Dairy the Piggery is the most in-
teresting feature of Valley View Farm. With
its buildings and its pastures the Piggery takes
up about forty acres. During the spring, sum-
mer, and early fall all except the very young pigs roam
at large over the hills and through the woods of their
pasture land. Twice a day, summoned by the call of
their keeper, they rush down the hillside, pushing, strug-
gling, and squealing, to the feeding-trough of their par-
ticular pasture. The entire number of pigs on the Farm
runs often as high as eighteen hundred Yorkshires. Each
pasture contains but sixty or seventy. A strange and
amusingspectacle, indeed, is this of the sixty or more pigs
of each pasture tearing down the hillside and crowding
to their stalls, squealing and grunting lest one or another
may get there first. And quite as ludicrous is the sight of
the pigs at the trough, struggling for food as if there were
not enough for all.

The sheds in which the pigs are housed are sanitary,
well ventilated, and thoroughly painted or whitewashed.
These one-story barns are almost one thousand feet long,
and contain hundreds of pens, each ten feet square, eight
on each side of the centre aisle, and as many more down
the side aisle. The feeding-troughs are iron, and over
each runs a pipe which conveys the skim milk from the
tank which receives it from the Dairy.

As only clean, dry sawdust, that is changed daily, is
used for bedding, and as the pens are kept carefully
whitewashed and cleaned daily, the pigs, which by
nature are more cleanly even than dogs, cows, or horses,
are kept in an extremely clean condition.

[ 50 ]

HEN a pig reaches one hundred and seventy-
five pounds, its best condition, it is dressed
at the slaughter-house, which is a part of the
Piggery, a certificate is forwarded to Wash-
ington to meet the requirements of the new inspection
law, and then the dressed pig, carefully packed in the
Farm refrigerator car, is shipped to the Parker House,
Boston, where it is cut up and distributed to the three
Hotels in the form of either sausage, bacon, fresh pork,
salt pork, or ham.

EXTERIOR OF THE PIGGERY.

INTERIOR OF THE PIGGERY.

A PEN IN THE PIGGERY, THE FRONT OF WHICH HAS BEEN TAKEN OUT.

A SOW AND YOUNG PIGS.

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A BOAR.

PIGS CROWDING TO THE GATE LEADING TO THE FEEDING-TROUGHS.

PIGS RUSHING THROUGH THE GATE JUST OPENED BY AN ATTENDANT.

DRESSED PIGS READY FOR SHIPMENT.

MAKING SAUSAGE AT THE PARKER HOUSE, BOSTON.

TRETCHING over the hillsides at the side of
the Farm are the fields and hen-houses where
the hundreds of fowls of all sorts are kept.
An expert is also in charge of this department
of the Farm, and here, too, the same care is used to have
only the best stock. Sometimes as many as two thousand
chickens are roaming about the Hennery. Each day the
eggs are collected, and are shipped with the other Dairy
products to the Hotels, and to the same tables go many
juicy spring chickens.

A PEN OF WHITE PLYMOUTH ROCKS.

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ANOTHER PEN OF WHITE PLYMOUTH ROCKS.

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CHICKENS FEEDING.

HE New Boston Dairy, while an interesting and
important department of the J. R. Whipple
Company, supplies the Hotels with only a
few of the necessary products. The manage-
ment has not been content with the surety that its
patrons were receiving the very best butter, milk, cream,
pork, eggs, and vinegar, but has attempted to supply
the very best of everything, and to know as far as pos-
sible the conditions under which the supplies are pro-
duced and the manner in which they are stored and cared
for. To carry out this purpose, a Supply Department has
been organized to buy supplies for all three Hotels and to
provide proper storerooms for groceries and refrigeration
for meats, fish, and all kinds of perishable goods. A new
building has been built, connected with the Hotel Tou-
raine and equipped with a modern cold storage plant.
Here is kept all the beef used at the three Hotels, selected
by experts and stored under a careful supervision until
just the right age for use at the Hotels. Trout fresh from
the brooks near Wareham ; scallops and oysters from the
fishermen on Cape Cod ; cheese made under special con-
ditions in New York State, for exacting patrons ; flour in
car-load lots received direct from the best mills; turtles;
terrapin; wines especially selected; ash -cans; electric
fans; blankets; Irish linen made especially for the Hotels;
lace curtains; silverware; china from France, — form a
small part of the supplies furnished from this depart-
ment.

But they all exist — Farm, Creamery, Piggery, Supply
Department — only to furnish the guests of Parker's,
Young's, and the Touraine with the best that can be
obtained.

[ 62 ]

REFRIGERATING PLANT OF THE SUPPLY DEPARTMENT.

SUPPLY DEPARTMENT MAKING ARTIFICIAL ICE.

REFRIGERATOR CONTAINING ABOUT FOUR HUNDRED LOINS OF BEEF.

PART OF LINEN ROOM CONTAINING SUPPLIES FOR THE THREE HOTELS.

HOTEL TOURAINE, BOYLSTON AND TREMONT STREETS.

LIBRARY, HOTEL TOURAINE.

OVAL DRAWLN'G-ROOM, HOTEL TOURAINE.

LIBRARY, PARKER HOUSE.

DRAWINO-ROOM, PARKER HOUSE.

EXTERIOR OF YOUNG'S HOTEL, COURT SQUARE AND COURT STREET.

DRAWING-ROOM, YOUNG'S HOTEL.

BANQUET-ROOM, YOUNG'S HOTEL.

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