THE MAORI MESSENGER. Auckland, September 27, 1849. DAIRY FARMING.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume 1, Issue 20, 27 September 1849, Page 1

THE MAORI MESSENGER. Auckland, September 27, 1849. DAIRY FARMING.

[Continued from our last.) CHEESE MAKING. Having devoted so much space to the important subject of the production of we now proceed to oiler a few - Suggestions with respect to a collateral 7'ranch of the same pastoral system,— *,. c manufacture of cheese. However profitable a thriving butter trade may be found to be, the export of good, sound, well flavoured, cheese will prove in no degree less remunerating'. The advantages possessed by New Zealand for the production of the one are not less available for tlie manufacture of the other ; and as nature seems to have designed these islands not merely as the granary but, likewise, as the provision depots of the South Pacific Ocean, it is earnestly to be desired) in furtherance of that destiny, that every care should be taken to impress upon the native and colonial mind

the facility anil the value of dairy husbandry. Notwithstanding the cheese dairy es(ab'islinicnt may differ iti some respects from that of the butter dairy, still as fains situation, cleanliness, and other general details, are concerned the system is precisely the same, and oil these essential points reference should he made to the most convenient measures, such ns have already been furnished when treating of the butter dairy, the management of its utensils, and the feeding and conduct of the cows, See.

In addition to tho observations then tit ado, it may bo here remarked that a cheese dairy should consist of four rooms, namely,—a milk room, which should be on the plan of that in use for butter dairies. As the entire produce of the cows is seldom made into cheese, it may be necessary to make U3e of coolers ; but when that is not the case, it will be more convenient to have shelves for the milk vessels, for the more ready carriage of the milk to the cheese tubs or copper, when it is to be warmed. In the next a room for making and pressing the cheese, which should bo contiguous to the milk room, and have a fire place and other conveniences the same as the butter dairy. In the third place, a salting room, whioh should be Hugged or neatly paved, with a descent to carry off the water when it is washed. It ta requisite, in this room, to have a strong table or shelf, on which the cheese may be laid and turned from lime to time, until ready to be deposited in the store or

cheese room, where tliev arc kept until (it to bo carried to the market. The last apartment, the cheese room or store, may be over the oilier three : but in Cheshire* anil some other oi' the English counties, cctebratcd for (ho excellence o'' their cheese, the store is usually placed over the cow houses, upon a supposition that the lien! of the cattle beneath imparls to the cheeses that uniform ami moderate degree of temperature which is conceived to be essential to the proper ripening of them, —dry coarse grass or rushes being placed as litter upon the lliior. Cheese rooms are frequently fitted up with shelves, by which the walls of some are cntiro'v lined, and with a stage or two in t'"e mi.'dV, room being left between them for the necessary passage. The utensils of a cheese dairy are different from those required in a butter dairy ; besides milk coolers, which ara common to the latter, the following artie'es will be found necessary in order to carrying on cheese making to advantage. First,—a cheese ttib. In this vessel the Cltrd is broken and prepared for being made into cheese-tubs are either round or ova ! . A cheese knife, which is a large kind of spatula, made of wood wrought to as thin an edge as possible ; it is used in some; dailies, and ought to be in all, for the purpose of cut'ing or breaking down tl'o curd while in the cheese tub. In the county of Gloucester, in England, the cheese knife consists of a wooden handle, four or (ive inches in length, furnished with two or three iron blades, twelve inches long, one inch broad at the handle, tapering down to about three quarters of an inch at the point, with two blunt edges, rounded at the point like an ivory paper knife; the blades are placed about oiib inch asunder, very thin, and nre ranged with their tint sides towards eaeii other.

The cheese cloth is a piece of linen in which the cheese is placed in the press. 11l Gloucestershire it is nm<lc of a tliin gauze-like linen ;—the size varies in different dairies, and it is proper to liavo cheesis cloths of different decrees of fineness. A cliuese hoard is a circular piece of board, inn l<: of wood that will not warp, ami p'aucd smoutli on both sides.

Cheese boaids are about an inch oi' au inch and a liiilt' in thickness, and upon them the newly made cnci'.-cs .TO placed 011 (lie shelves in the cheese room. t hoy arc of various si/.es, anil so formed as to pass within the hoop part of the vat, and receive the weight ami power of the press. The cheese vat is a strong kind of wooden I'oop with a bottom, which, as well as the sides, is perforated with holes, to allow the whey to escape while the cheese is pressing. In every cheese dairy there should he vats of various sizes constantly in readiness, otherwise the dairyman will often he disappointed and unable to adapt his vat or va'.s to the quantity of curd which may happen to be in the cheese tub ; the addition of a little overplus curd, which is kept from meal to meal, often spoils a whole cheese. When three or four cheeses are made at a meal, a number of vats must be actually in

use. The cheese-press, as its name declares, is employed for the purpose of forcing the whey from the curd, while in the vat, by means of pressure. In the making ol cheese much depends upon the construction and properly applied power of the press. Ifit does 11c t press level—if it has too much play, so as to incline, leaning one way or another: —if it does not fall perpendicular upon the cheese board, one side of a cheese will be thicker than

tlic other, and, what is still worse, one side will be thoroughly pressed whilst the other will be left soft anil spongy. The power of the cheese press may be given either hy a screw, which is the most usual; by a lever which wns formerly much in use; or hy a dead weight; but whatever form of press may be adopted, such power ought always to he proportioned to the thickness of the cheese. On those principles, a gentleman named Marshall, caused a cheese press to he coiistnu tod ; —its power was a dead weight of stones contained in a square box. moving in groove's, so as to keep its bottom horizontal, and the medium weight was a hundred und eighty pounds, but regulated by the stones according to the thickness of the cheese to be pressed. Where butter and cheese are both made in the same dairy (as sometimes is the case) 110 chrese press should be fixed in the place where the milk and butter arc kept, as whey and curd will diffuse their acidity throughout the room. The cheesetongs are a kind of wooden frame which i 3 occasionally placed 011 the cheese-tub when the vat is .set 011 it, in order to drain the whey from the curd. Such are the utensils necessary for a cheese dairy. They are at once simple and inexpensive in their construction, and require but a very moderate portion of dexterity in their management —judgment throughout the process of manufacture, hut above nil things cleanliness, being the chief requisite. In the manufacture of cheese there are various circumstances that claim the attention of the farmer—that is to say, the management of the milk, the preparation of rennet and colouring matter, season for making cheese, setting the curd and managing Hie cheese whilst in the press, the process of salting, and its subsequent attention in the cheese room—all of which points shall be treated in their respective p'ac.es. As the quality of cheese depends in a great measure 011 that of the milk from which it is made, it is of great importance that the food of the cows be both who'csome and succulent; much, however, de-pf-mls on the remoteness or vicinity of the pasture from or to the house where the cheese is made; for if cows are driven any considerable distance to be milked, especially during the summer, their mi k will become heated in the udder, which will retard the coming of the curd. It is also injurious to milk them in the field and carry the milk home from a distance in barrels or oilier vessels, for the violence of the motion approaches to the nature of churning, and thus renders the milk unlit for converting into chcc-se. Even if the dairyman succeeds in obtaining curd, which, in this case, will IVer|iicntly require from three to live hours, the cheese made from it will be apt to split, niul heave, and be of an inferior qua'ily. On every account, therefore, i lie pntofiie of stall-feeding cows will he found to keeping them in dis\:_i 111 pastures. The times for

vary iu ditlcrent English cheese counties, fll CliL'sliire it is performed, during the summer, .it si* o'clock in the morning and at six in tlie evening; and in winter at daylight and immediately before dark; bnt in Wiltshire, and some other counties, the servants arc constantly milking by lour o'clock in the morning in summer, and the business of forty or fifty cows is nearly completed before it commences in Cheshire. The latter practice is certainly the best, as the milk will be in a mote natural state when drawn from the cons in the cool of the morning than if left till the heat of the day ; —but where cows are stall-fed, it is very probable that the practice of milking three times a day, would produce more milk than that of milkingthem twice only in the twenty-four hours. Great care, we repeat, should be taken to tnilk thrm clean, as many good cows arc injured by leaving the milk, and that by far tiie best, in their udders, from meal to meal: such neglect will not only diminish the daily quantity, but be the cause of diseases, by preventing the secretions and descent of the fluids to their proper vessels ; besides, as lite last drawn milk is much superior iu quality to the lirst, none should be left behind. When the milk is drawn it shou'd he conveyed as soon as possible to the milk-house, and poured into proper vessels to hasten the cooli»g. As leaden vessels cool milk more speedily, | they are much in U3e with some cheesemakers ; hut here, it should be observed, that lead combines with tiie acid* of the mi>k and vitiates it more or less; therefore, this inconvenience should be avoided in the operation of cooling, which, in summer, is of the greatest importance, to prevent fermentation, and may be done by pouring it IVom one set' of cooling vessels into another until lit tVr the rennet and process of separation. (To be continued.)