HOW TO MAKE GILT-EDGED BUTTER

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1163, 15 June 1894, Page 6

HOW TO MAKE GILT-EDGED BUTTER

Whether a large or small amount of milk or butter is sold from the farm in a year, one is seldom satisfied with the price that is paid for it. The limit usually runs from ten to twenty-five cents a pound, while the creameries are getting from twenty-two to forty cents for the same article, only better made and furnished in large lots of a uniform quality. Here is a heavy loss to the farm. While it is true that good tools alone will not make fine butter or rich milk, yet they are indispensable to encourage the average maker to produce a better article. Tools are so cheap, too, that there ought to be a higher standard in the dairy output of the farm. In the first place, old dairy implements that have been used for years, especially if they have any wood about them, become so thoroughly soaked with old butter greaße that it is impossible to make a fine article with them. The instant cream or fresh butter comes in contact with them, they take all the life and fine flavour out of the fresh article. For instance, a piece of board, as is often seen, that has been used in the dairy for many seasons to cover the pans , of milk, will deaden the cream as fast as it rises on the surface of the milk, so that good butter cannot be made from it. An old churn that shells strong from age will rob the butter of half its value. Milk as it comes from the cow is rich in high flavours, but of an exceeding perishable nature. To hold those flavours, everything with which it comes in contact must be as cool and clean and fresh as possible up to the time the bargain is struck with the merchant. The first necessity is that the stables are clean, with no smell of rotting manure about them. Then use nicely scoured tin buckets to milk in. Hurry the milk out of the stable, or away from the cows, and set it immediately for creaminsr in cans or pans that are perfectly clean, and covered not with wood, but with sheets of scoured tin. The can that holds the cream must be scalded in hot water every time it is emptied, so that no particle of the old batch can get into the new. No churn should be used more than two seasons unless made of metal, or kept immaculately clean. In this respect the churn is the mcst dangerous of all dairy utensils, and must be aired as much as possible up to the point of cracking it with too much drying out. Let the

sun shine into it often. While no one should ever put the bare hands to butter, it must be manipulated. To do this, the best implements are two flat paddles, made of hard wood. The table on which the butter is worked is easily kept clean, and should also be made of hard wood. But the point of fatal error with many farmers' wives is that they will not pack and market the butter in the best shape to get good prices for it. The trouble usually comes from making the butter at odd times, and having no regular time for taking it to town, instead of first determining on what days of the month shipments can be made, and then regulate everything to that end. Butter should always be delivered within two weeks of the time the milk came from the cow; of tener if possible. Cream can be held from four to six days, depending on how cold it is kept and how sweet it was when taken from the milk. Never let it get too old, or all your hopes for good quality and high price will be crushed. The farm output of butter will hardly be large enough to warrant using the ordinary butter tubs, and that is not the best shape to sell farm butter. By all means put it in one pound or two pound cakes, and press ridges across the top of each pat with the paddle. Now for a bit of enterprise, get some of the paraffin paper to wrap the prints in, or use cheesecloth. Do not use old cloths, even though thoroughly clean. What you buy for this purpose will not cost a quarter of a cent to the pound of butter, while it will add several cents to the market value of each pound. A little neatness in this regard sharpens the appetite of the buyer.—L. S. Hardin, in American Agriculturalist.