THROUGH THE RONGOTEA

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1511, 14 February 1901, Page 16

THROUGH THE RONGOTEA

(By “Viator.”)

A few years ago this district was known as Cuinp~belltown, and like many others, it has got a new name, whether Maori or not I cannot say, except it sounds liko “Ceylon Tea/'. Be that as it may, it is peculiar in many ways as a prohibition stronghold—about the only one m the North Island. Bacchus has no shrine here, nor for a distance of eight miles can he approach. Religion runs at high pressure. Rongotea has nearly as many churches as Ephesus of old. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness’ is heard daily in the' square—something on Salvation Army lines,' but without the “sounding brass” or the uniform. Farmers regard ■ Rongotea as the Indian does the happy hunting grounds, and we hear of the happy lot of the dairy farmers and their great wealth, but to me they seem to live on. to-morrow, just the same as elsewhere.

One feature of these dairying districts is the great road traffic- About 3 or 4 a.m. work begins—milking. It seems ten or twelve cows are a fair allowance for one person. At six a.m. the milk is taken to the factory, where the cream is removed. This generally takes till 10 a.m., and the milk, minus cream, is returned to the calves.

There are two milk factories and a creamery, about three miles apart. The one at Rongotea has 80 carts supplying it and the others 20 carts each. So from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. 120 carts converge to the-se factories, and from 10 to noon the tide is reversed. It therefore seems that- 240 milk carts traverse the road each forenoon. . It seems the factories combined get 10,000 gallons of milk daily in summer and, say, one-fourth in winter- Providers gefc 3d per gallon for milk and it takes 34 gallons to make lib of. butter. The same quantity of milk will make 31b of cheese.

The cream separates when the milk is placed in a rapidly-revolving basin, moving, say, 1500 times in a minute. Motion encourages the coming together of similar particles. We have it in churning, and the gold-miner’s cradle or dish acts on the same principle. The strange tiling seems they' cannot make it into butter in one operation. Four-and-a-haif per cent of salt is added to the butter, and it is said every pcarticla of milk is washed out of tile butter. A simple test to see if all the milk is removed would be to put seme butter into a muslin bag along with a stone. Drop these into a jug and fill up with hot water. It there is any milk remaining thel water will not be clear after the butter melts and conies to the top. It is the* milk that makes the butter become rancid, and butter prepared in this way will keep for months. It is said a cow pays from £6 to £lO yefarly, but little can be done for the six winter months, and when land, cow, fencing, cartage and labour come out of it the percentage of profit cannot be much.