Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

by Charles Nordhoff

The tenant receives from the proprietor all this, the land, and, cows to stock it. He furnishes, on his part, all the dairy utensils, the needed horses and wagons, the furniture for the house, the farm implements, and the necessary labor. The tenant pays to the owner twenty-seven dollars and a half per annum for each cow, and agrees to take the best care of the stock and of all parts of the farm; to make the necessary repairs, and to raise for the owner annually one-fifth as many calves as he keeps cows, the remainder of the calves being killed and fed to the pigs. He agrees also to sell nothing but butter and hogs from the farm, the hogs being entirely the tenant's property.

Under this system fifteen hundred and twenty cows are now kept on nine separate farms on this estate, the largest number kept by one man being two hundred and twenty-five, and the smallest one hundred and fifteen. Mr. Howard has been for years improving his herd; he prefers short-horns, and he saves every year the calves from the best milkers in all his herd, using also bulls from good milking strains. I was told that the average product of butter on the whole estate is now one hundred and seventy-five pounds to each cow; many cows give as high as two hundred, and even two hundred and fifty pounds per annum.

Men do the milking, and also the butter-making, though on one farm I found a pretty Swedish girl superintending all the indoor work, with such skill and order in all the departments, that she possessed, so far as I saw, the model dairy on the estate.

Here, said I to myself, is now an instance of the ability of women to compete with men which would delight Mrs. Stanton and all the Woman's Rights people; here is the neatest, the sweetest, the most complete dairy in the whole region; the best order, the most shining utensils, the nicest butter-room—and not only butter, but cheese also, made, which is not usual; and here is a rosy-faced, white-armed, smooth-haired, sensibly-dressed, altogether admirable, and, to my eyes, beautiful Swedish lass presiding over it all; commanding her men-servants, and keeping every part of the business in order.

Alas! Mrs. Stanton, she has discovered a better business than butter-making. She is going to marry—sensible girl that she is—and she is not going to marry a dairy-farmer either.

I doubt if any body in California will ever make as nice butter as this pretty Swede; certainly, every other dairy I saw seemed to me commonplace and uninteresting, after I had seen hers. I don't doubt that the young man who has had the art to persuade her to love him ought to be hanged, because butter-making is far more important than marrying. Nevertheless, I wish him joy in advance, and, in humble defiance of Mrs. Stanton and her brilliant companions in arms, hereby give it as my belief that the pretty Swede is a sensible girl—that, to use a California vulgarism, "her head is level."

The hogs are fed chiefly on skim-milk, and belong entirely to the tenant. The calves, except those which are raised for the proprietor, are, by agreement, killed and fed to the pigs. The leases are usually for three years.

The cows are milked twice a day, being driven for that purpose into a corral, near the milk-house. I noticed that they were all very gentle; they lay down in the corral with that placid air which a good cow has; and whenever a milkman came to the beast he wished to milk, she rose at once, without waiting to be spoken to. One man is expected to milk twenty cows in the season of full milk. On some places I noticed that Chinese were employed in the milk-house, to attend to the cream and make the butter.

The tenants are of different nationalities, American, Swedes, Germans, Irish, and Portuguese. A tenant needs about two thousand dollars in money to undertake one of these dairy-farms; the system seems to satisfy those who are now engaged in it. The milkers and farm hands receive thirty dollars per month and "found;" and good milkers are in constant demand. Every thing is conducted with great care and cleanliness, the buildings being uncommonly good for this State, water abundant, and many labor-saving contrivances used.

At one end of the corral or yard in which the cows are milked is a platform, roofed over, on which stands a large tin, with a double strainer, into which the milk is poured from the buckets. It runs through a pipe into the milk-house, where it is again strained, and then emptied from a bucket into the pans ranged on shelves around. The cream is taken off in from thirty-six to forty hours; and the milk keeps sweet thirty-six hours, even in summer. The square box-churn is used entirely, and is revolved by horse-power. They usually get butter, I was told, in half an hour.