JERSEY CAN.
Now comes the cooling of the milk. To make good butter we must cool our milk rapidly. The sooner we cool it down to 47 degrees after it leaves the cow the better the butter will be. The old-fashioned way of setting the milk in shallow pans or crocks in the milk cupboard, which in summer was placed in the cellar and in the pantry in winter, is still kept up by a good many farmers, and this no doubt accounts for the steady production of ten-cent store butter with which our markets are always overstocked. If you expect to make good butter never set the milk in the pantry or cellar, as the odors which it will absorb there are just as numerous, if not quite so bad, as those in the cow stable. There is but one way, and dairymen are pretty generally agreed upon it, and that is to set the milk in deep cans in cold water, and the colder the water the quicker the separation of the cream from the milk. If you cannot afford to buy the patent deep setting cans like the Cooley, the Haney, the Jersey, or the Wilhelm, by all means get the common deep setting "shot-gun" can, with or without the glass gauges in the sides. The purpose of all these cans is to cool the milk rapidly, and though the manufacturers of this or that can may claim that their can does the work more quickly than the others, I am of opinion that they are all good, and one as good as the rest. If you have a spring, and can set the cans in the ground, where the water can flow all around and over the cans, you will be fortunate indeed. If you have no spring, and cannot afford a creamer, make a tank a little deeper than the cans, and keep the water flowing around the cans. The colder the water the better. If the water from your well is not colder than 47 degrees you should use ice. By using ice or very cold spring or well water you get all, or nearly all, the cream to rise in from twelve to twenty hours, and as I said before, and I want to firmly impress it upon your minds, the quicker you get the cream to rise the better butter you can make. Never allow the milk to set more than thirty hours, as it becomes acid or too thick, and loses much in flavor. I would much prefer to skim sooner, if I lost some of the cream by so doing, as I would more than make up what I lost in quantity by the improved quality.
"SHOT-GUN" CAN.
COOLEY CAN.
