EARLY DAIRYING.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1724, 15 April 1913, Page 8

EARLY DAIRYING.

"THE GOOD OLD DAYS." Tho. country is getting muddy and generally disagreeable these pre-winter days, but the lift} of tho dairy , farmer in 1913 is one of undiluted joy compared to the conditions which had to be faced thirty or "more years ago. Many times, no doubt, a successful dairy farmer of today, who lias fought through half a lifetime at tho back of beyond, will cast his memory back to tho old days, and thank goodness that those hard years can never | return. In theso times, with butter-fat I high and tho cheque from the factory coming in every.month, followed probably I by, a bonus at the end of the season, the pioneer dairyman is in a position to smile grimly at the troubles of years gone by. In those "good old days" there was practically, no market for the produce which is now sfc eagerly sought after, and but-ter-making was the bane of the whole family, who took it in turns to "wallop" the stuff with a stick in a tubular-shaped contraption l in the hope that- it "would come." The fanner rarely saw hard cash for his product, and the settling up with the local storekeeper generally left the producer as deep if not deeper in tho mire 'than ever. Of course, there were exceptions to this rule, but they were all too scarce. Churning day on the farm- was a veritable day of liorrors for tlio farmer and his family, and too often when tho butter would not "come" destruction was in turn called down on the churn, the weather, the crcain, and, lastly, the cows, whose lactic fluid'was of siich' poor quality that nothing'could be dorio with it. Of tho quality of a great deal of the butter, the less said tho better, but some oldtime storekeepers - can wax- eloquent on the subject. "Imagine thirty or forty different brands of butter coming in from .as many different kinds of dairy people, each with different ideas on the subject of milking, dairy hygiejie, and the manufacture of tho .product. "Some," says a veteran storekeeper, "brought butter a bright red, others lead white, others a black and tan mixture, wrapped up in something resembling a dish-cloth, while others brought stuff with white streaks in it like the columns of a Roman palace." "Worst of all," added the storekeeper, "they all demanded tho highest ruling price for their product, and each farmer or his wifo was immovable in tho belief that his or her butter was tho best made. Under the chaotic conditions of the times a first-class article could hardly be expected, but some of the stuff was simply awful. There , was no system of grading or of making, no special market, and the whole scheme as I first saw it was a farco and a failure. What wonder that in Taranaki in those days fungus-picking was an industiy, whilst, dairying was a drudge? What wonder that the mortgage pressed heavily on the farm, and that tho old spring trap was mostly drawn by a venerable quadruped, tied up with string harness, and that tho storekeeper nnd the merchant both had bad times, and that the State itself became so hard up that it .was afraid to commit itself to the cost of the construction of a railway line from Wollinston to l'alinerston North,' You talk about the hardships of farming today—well, just thank your stars that you did not have to bnttlo through the 'good old days.' "