Milch Cows and Dairy Farming / Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

by Charles Louis Flint

The remainder, the skim-milk from the milk bowls or pans, sour milk, or butter-milk, is poured into a particular vessel, and made into spice-cheese.

Besides the methods here described for keeping milk for butter, milk is used for other purposes. Sweet milk cheese is made of the unskimmed milk; cream is used in the house for coffee. Rennet is also added to fresh milk, and the product is immediately sold, being greatly relished by many. From skim-milk and butter-milk put together is made an article called kramery by cooking the mixture, putting it into a linen bag, and hanging it in a cool part of the milk-cellar, or elsewhere, when the liquid drops out and leaves a mass of considerable consistence, called Hangebast.

As soon as the milk is taken from the vessels, they are taken out of the cellar and carefully cleansed and dried before being used again.

Methods of Churning.

—Churning is the principal operation in the manufacture of butter, for by it the fatty particles are separated from the other constituents. There are several methods in Holland of effecting this separation of the butter globules. The oldest and simplest is that of putting the cream into an upright churn, in which the cream is agitated by moving a long dasher, pierced with holes, up and down, till the object is accomplished.

Fig. 100.

There are, strictly speaking, only two forms of the churn which are used in all parts of the country. One is broad at the bottom and narrow at the top. This has been known from the earliest times, and is called the old churn, [Fig. 100].

This old churn is still used in many dairies, and it has the preference over the other form, because it is thought to bring the butter quicker and more completely.

The other form is more like a beer or brandy cask on end, being smaller at each end than in the middle, and is called the barrel-churn. Both kinds are made of oak-wood, and have wooden or broad metal hoops. In the one case they are painted outside; in the other, they remain of the natural color, but are the more frequently scoured, so that the dark-colored oak-wood gets a whitish color. The metallic hoops are always kept polished bright.