There has been much discussion as to the best means of cooling milk for market, and patent pails have been tried in which the milk passes directly from the cow through small, coiled tubes surrounded by ice. But this rapid cooling does not work well, and practical experience indicates that the old simple process is the best. Every well-appointed farm must have, therefore, a cool and unfailing stream of water. There are two such streams in one of the farms we visited. One passes through the barn, furnishing drinking troughs for the cattle, and a tank for cooling milk in winter. The other, running through the pasture, supplies a trout-breeding pond, and furnishes a tank for summer use. In a little hut under the trees, the milk cans are kept in a stream, which even the severe drought of last summer did not dry, nor the heat raise to a temperature of 60°.
We are assured most positively that none of the spring water finds its way over the mouth of the can into the milk. Its dilution, of which there is so much just complaint, must be done, if at all, in the city, for the wholesale buyer is said to have such means of testing the milk as effectually protects him against the farmer. May the man be busy at work who is to give each family such a protection. We have heard it said that one end of a small piece of common tape placed in a pan of milk will carry from it all the water into another vessel in which the other end of the tape should be placed; but we have never found this a safe test.
Strange to say, no butter is made on these large milk farms. The supply for the family is obtained from market, or, more rarely, from a neighbor who churns all his milk for the accommodation of those who send all theirs to the city. Our notions of the way to make butter were decidedly overturned on going to such a dairy. No setting of the milk in shallow pans for cream to rise; no skimming and putting away in jars until "churning day," when the thick cream was agitated by a strong arm until the butter came, then worked and salted. Instead, there is a daily pouring of the unskimmed soured milk into a common churn, perhaps somewhat larger than ordinary. The dasher is fastened to a shaft, which is moved by a crank. The crank is turned by means of a nearly horizontal wheel some eight or ten feet in diameter, which is kept in motion by a dog, sheep, or calf standing on it, something after the manner of the old tread-mill.
When taken from the churn, the butter is worked by hand as of old. The farmer with whom we have talked said he was about determined to send his milk to the creamery, since butter-making made it so hard for the women. Surely woman is less a drudge than she used to be. If, after being relieved from the labor of churning, the remaining working of the butter is considered too hard for the farmer's wife, the day of a woman's redemption must be near at hand.
Only one butter farm, have we been able to find, and not enough is made there to supply the immediate neighborhood. Where, then, does all the Orange county butter come from? Mostly from the West. Farmers buy from the vicinity of the Alleghenies, and even further west, large quantities, which they sell in the original packages or repack in pails. Since railroads have become so numerous, New York drinks up all the milk in Orange county, and must butter her bread elsewhere.
The largest institution for the disposition of milk is the Creamery, which is, in other words, a cheese factory. Here is brought the milk which the farmers themselves are unable properly to prepare for market, for want of cool springs or sufficient help. Received here, it is placed in deep but narrow tin pails holding twelve or fourteen quartz. These are floated in large tanks of water. From these pails the cream is carefully taken and sent to market. The skimmed milk is then placed in a large vat and heated, by means of steam pipes to about 80°. Then the rennet is put in. From twenty to thirty minutes suffices for curdling, and the mass is then stirred to separate the curd from the whey. After which it is heated still more; and then the whey, passing off through a strainer, goes to feed hogs, while the curd remains in the vat, to be salted and worked before putting into the presses. In two or three hours the curds become hard enough for the canvas to be put upon them ready for the shelves. Very carefully they must then be watched, lest the fly lying in wait for them makes in them a snug house for her family. Greasing and turning must be a daily labor, and some weeks must pass before they are sufficiently cured for market.
For the benefit of city consumers, who are paying ten and twelve cents a quart for milk, from a tenth to a quarter of which is not infrequently pure Croton, we may add that the highest price the farmer ever gets for his milk is seven cents a quart; and he sometimes sells it for as low as two cents and a half. Our friends, the milkmen, have, therefore, it will be seen, a pretty good margin for freight and profit.