The Fat of the Land: The Story of an American Farm

by John Williams Streeter

Of course I had trouble in getting a dairymaid. I was not looking for the bouncing, buxom, red-cheeked, arms-akimbo, butter-colored-hair sort. I didn't care whether she were red-cheeked and bouncing or not, but for obvious reasons I didn't want her hair to be butter-colored. What I did want was a woman who understood creamery processes, and who could and would make the very giltest of gilt-edged butter.

I commenced looking for my paragon in January. I interviewed applicants of both sexes and all nationalities, but there was none perfect; no, not one. I was not exactly discouraged, but I certainly began to grow anxious as the time approached when I should need my dairymaid, and need her badly. One day, while looking over the Rural New Yorker (I was weaned on that paper), I saw the following advertisement. "Wanted: Employment on a dairy-farm by a married couple who understand the business." If this were true, these two persons were just what I needed; but, was it true? I had tried a score of greater promise and had not found one that would do. Was I to flush two at once, and would they fall to my gun?

A small town in one of the Middle Western states was given as the address, and I wrote at once. My letter was strong in requirements, and asked for particulars as to experience, age, references, and nationality. The reply came promptly, and was more to my liking than any I had received before. Name, French; Americans, newly married, twenty-eight and twenty-six respectively; experience four and three years in creamery and dairy work; references, good; the couple wished to work together to save money to start a dairy of their own. I was pleased with the letter, which was an unusual one to come from native-born Americans. Our people do not often hunt in couples after this manner. I telegraphed them to come to the city at once.

It was late in April when I first saw the Frenches. The man was tall and raw-boned, but good-looking, with a frank manner that inspired confidence. He was a farmer's son with a fair education, who had saved a little money, and had married his wife out of hand lest some one else should carry her off while he was building the nest for her.

"I took her when I could get her," he said, "and would have done it with a two-dollar bill in my pocket rather than have taken chances."

The woman was worthy of such an extreme measure, for she looked capable of caring for both. She was a fine pattern of a country girl, with a head full of good sense, and very useful-looking hands and arms. Her face was good to look upon; it showed strength of character and a definite object in life. She said she understood the creamery processes in all their niceties, and that she could make butter good enough for Queen Victoria.

The proposition offered by this young couple was by far the best I had received, and I closed with them at once. I agreed to pay each $25 a month to start with, and explained my plan of an increasing wage of $1 a month for each period of six months' service. They thought they ought to have $30 level. I thought so, too, if they were as good as they promised. But I had a fondness for my increasing scale, and I held to it. These people were skilled laborers, and were worth more to begin with than ordinary farm hands. That is why I gave them $25 a month from the start. Six hundred dollars a year for a man and wife, with no expense except for clothing, is good pay. They can easily put away $400 out of it, and it doesn't take long to get fore-handed. I think the Frenches have invested $500 a year, on an average, since they came to Four Oaks.

It is now time to get at the dairy-house, since the dairy and the dairymaid are both in evidence. The house was to be on the building line, and both Polly and I thought it should have attractive features. We decided to make it of dark red paving brick. It was to be eighteen feet by thirty, with two rooms on the ground. The first, or south room, ten feet by eighteen, was fitted for storing fruit, and afforded a stairway to the rooms above, which were four in number besides the bath. The larger room was of course the butter factory, and was equipped with up-to-date appliances,—aërator, Pasteurizer, cooler, separator, Babcock tester, swing churn, butter-worker, and so on. The house was to have steep gables and projecting eaves, with a window in each gable, and two dormer windows in each roof. The walls were to be plastered, and the ground floor was to be cement. It cost $1375.

As motive power for the churn and separator, a two-sheep-power treadmill has proved entirely satisfactory. It is worked by two sturdy wethers who are harbored in a pleasant house and run, close to the power-house, and who pay for their food by the sweat of their brows and the wool from their backs. They do not appear to dislike the "demnition grind," which lasts but an hour twice a day; they go without reluctance to the tramp that leads nowhere, and the futile journey which would seem foolish to anything wiser than a sheep. This sheep-power is one of the curios of the place. My grand-girls never lose their interest in it, and it has been photographed and sketched more times than there are fingers and toes on the sheep.

The expenditure for equipment, from separator to sheep, was $354. I made an arrangement with a fancy grocer in the city to furnish him thirty pounds, more or less, of fresh (unsalted) butter, six days in the week, at thirty-three cents a pound, I to pay express charges. I bought six butter-carriers with ice compartments for $3.75 each, $23 in all, and arranged with the express company to deliver my packages to the grocer for thirty cents each. The butter netted me thirty-two cents a pound that year, or about $60 a week.