Farmers’ Column.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 21, 17 June 1871, Page 9

Farmers’ Column.

BUTTER-MAKING IN AMEEICA. Mr J. B. Corban, a gentleman of large experience in farming matters, writes as follows in the " New York Tribune" : 1. How deep should milk .be set ? If in the common eight quart pans, and. the milk is to be skimmed, they should not be filled over half full in hot weather; but in cold weather they may be filled as full as convenient to? handle. If all the milk is to be churned, then fill them full or use pails. Many of my acquaintances use the large patent pans with good results. The size of the pan is made according to the size of the dairy, requiring only one pan for a milking. They are placed in a vat, wilh an ice box, at one end, and so constructed that water may pass from the ice under and around the pan, and escape at the other end, or come back to the same end and dipped in to the ice again. The milk may be brought and kept to the proper temperature in them. Cream will rise in a higher temperature than it will do to churn, but it is advisable to keep it about right for churning which is 58 to 62. There is a factory system of making butter carried on in some places, with very good success. They use pails and coolers, 8 inches across and 22 inches deep. They are filled with milk, then set into a pool " of cold, circulating water the depth of the milk, and kept there until ready to be skimmed. 2. How long shall the milk stand before skimming P From 38 to 48 hours, when it should be sour, and lapper on the bottom of the vessel. In the factory system they usually take the cream off before the milk sours, and make cheese of the milk. They let the cream stand until it sours a little before churning it. 3. How old may cream be to make good butter ? It should be churned very soon after it is taken off, or is broken up, as sour cream will very soon whey, or rather commence to decompose, after being disturbed, especially in hot weather. I think it advantageous to churn all of the milk, rather than, to skim and churn the cream only, if coolers, or the large pans, are not used. The butter will be of much better grain, and usually of better flavor, and commands a higher price, besides, there is less waste of cream sticking to so many vessels and utensils, it also saves skimming and much washing. 4. What is the best churn ? The up and down dash churn. There are many hundreds of churns patented, and I have seen a great many, and the results of them. I have visited a great many butter makings, and many of the most noted ones, with a butter worker, and have seen and worked butter made by many different kinds of churns, and do not hesitate to say that I never found as good butter as that which was produced by the old up and down dash churn. The only objection to the dash churn is, it is hard to work, but the grain in quality of butter more than pays the difference of labor. 5.. Why is some butter so slow to come ? There are many reasons for this. The , cows may not get proper food or water, or sufficient salt. Perhaps the cream or milk is not properly cared for, or it may not be of proper temperature which is of the I utmost importance both for the production of good butter and the time required to bring it. If below 58 deg., the buttery particles do not readily separate, and if above 62 deg., the grain, color, and flavor of the butter are all materially injured, "besides it will not come as readily. The shape and construction of the churn, also the way it is operated, will mike quite a

difference in bringing the butter ; also, in the quality of it. The churn should be made with a bulge about one third from the bottom. The dash should be two pieces, three to four inches wide, halved together and as large as will go on the bottom of the churn. There should not be any notches or holes through it, but the under side should be cupped out, and very fine holes, not larger than a knitting needle, through from the cups. In operating, the dash should always be brought out of the cream and to the top of the churn. The cups will carry air down to the bottom of the churn, and the pressure will force it through the fine holes into the cream, which will help to changeitandgivecolortothebutter. There should be a tube about three inches long through it so that the air might pass through it freely. The . dash should not be operated too fast, causing too much agitation, which will make the butter come pasty white. When everything is all right, if will not require at any time over 30 or 40 bring the butter, and it should not *be done in less than about 20.

6. How should the buttermilk be got out ? _. Should the butter be washed out P This is a question that has been discussed, perhaps more than any other connected with butter-making, and is not settled with small or family butter-makers; but in the best butter-making districts, butter is washed and dairymen in general wash it. My way of removing the butter milk from the butter is to put the butter from the churn into water enough to cover it, or more, and work it very little, only open it so that the water will come in contract with the milk; then pour off this milky water and put more on, and handle as before. Twice rinsing will generally cleanse any butter of its milk, also toughen the grain of the butter. But is not near as liable to get injured by washing the milk out as it is when the milk is worked out; besides, the sourness will all rinse out, which is almost impossible to be got out by working without injuring the grain.

7. How much salt to the pound? If for use, suit the taste, or the market it is designed for, but if for long keeping there should be grains of salt in it after it has dissolved all that it will want at present. About an ounce of pure fine salt to a pound of butter is about right for keeping or for the general market. 8. How should butter be put down P Sprinkle the packages with salt and then press the butter firmly, but not pound it as that will break the grain. When the package is full, spread a cloth wet in brine over it, and put about an inch of salt on it, and covered with brine, and see that it is kept covered. Butter that is properly manufactured and put down may be kept perfectly sweet for many years. The packages should be such as the butter will sell best in, but for keeping white oak firkins are best.

9. Butter in July.—ln very hot weather the cows should be kept as quiet as possible, with plenty of feed and water. The milk should be cooled to the proper temperature, and kept so, and watched closely, and, as soon as sour, churn the cream, and, as the butter comes, wash it in cold water, but put no ice on the butter, as it will chill and whiten it. Salt it pretty strong, and keep it in as cool a place as. possible, and work it when it is soft. 10. Butter in January.—ln cold weather heat the milk by setting it over hot water until a skin forms on the top, and wrinkles up, then set it where the temperature is about 62 deg., If the cream does not rise readily, warm the milk again. If the cows have sweet food, even if nothing but sweet hay, you will have no difficulty in making butter in freezing weather. But it will not do to keep cream till it has a butterish taste, for you can never get that taste out of the butter, nor to let the butter get so cold that you must warm it in order to work it over. SLOVENLY FAEMEES. Farmers generally possess too much land to be well cultivated. Fifty acres well tilled will ever produce more than a hundred acres badly managed. Now, all know, or should know, what cultivation is; but do all cultivate well? Do you take time by the forelock in preparing your grounds, and at a proper season ? Do you plough deep ? Do you use the subsoil plough where the lands want renovating ? Do you pulverise the soil by harrowing and dragging ? Do you obtain the fairest, the best seed you can find? Do you use, the best farming implements ft Do you keep them in order, or do you leave them in the fields to rust? Do you hoe the crops well and at the proper time? And do you harvest at the proper time ? Gentlemen, these are questions which you should all answer in the affirmative ; and there are many of a like nature, for your consideration. A thing well done gives pleasure to the doer. To go. into one's field, and behold fences buried in brambles and bushes—to see the grass and weeds peering over the tops of corn and potatoes—to view fields that have lain for ages uncultivated—to behold a

stunted growth of sward bound grass on such fields where clover ought to grow three feet high—to view an old ricketty shed here—and a faded, patched up, sleigh there—a pair of old wheels in one corner—a rusty old plough in another, all -exposed to the elements, gives pain to the beholder, unless he is proof against feeling.

When we travel along the highway, and see the want of taste, arrangement, symmetry, and proportions in buildings and fences, ungravelled walks, broken down door yard fences, with an old gate perchance hanging on one hinge and half prostrate upon the ground,,we can hardly believe that this man recognises " order" as " Heaven's first law." We are rather inclined to think that if human beings do dwell in such places, they cannot possess those noble traits of reason, judgment, skill, perseverance and energy that charac terise the human family. It is not because poverty weighs down their energies that we behold a lack of order and neatness around, but it is caused by sheer neglect and slovenliness—a lack of ambition to appear in neatness and order—a lack of energy to put things in their right places to begin with, and then to keep them there—a lack of taste in executing, and a lack of spirit to learn how to give the best and most pleasing effect and shape of things pertaining to the tene m3nt in which they dwell. And now a word to wives. You have taste. You would have your porches enfolded with festoons of the Cypress vine, the hyacinth, columbine, andhoneysuckle, if you could. Your little pots of monthly roses—your geraniums and violets show that the love of nature has not been wholly effaced from your .breasts. It is not your fault that old ricketty steps crack beneath your feet, and that rail fences still remain before your doors. It is not your fault that the pigstye is at the kitchen door, and that no slop pool has been excavated, with a trough running thereto, for the especial discharge of your waste water. It is not your fault that no clothes stakes have been set for your lines, and that you will bring water from the spring or catch the precarious drippings from your roofs to wash with, when a good cistern might just as well be made as not. No, these are not your faults, farmers' wives, but the faults of those lounging, swaggering, lazy bipeds who infest your dwellings. Ye young girls, listen to good advice. If you ever receive the addresses of a young man, with a view to a matrimonial alliance, go and examine his father's premises. If you there find no trace of his handiwork—nothing which would seem to indicate that he possessed some little taste —some desire to keep things in order, send him about his business. Such a thing has no right to a wife. Shun him— ; flee from him as you would from contagion. Your innate love for neatness and order should never be smothered by a union with such a being. Ueally, one's heart bleeds to witness the sloth, the neglect, the want of taste that everywhere meets the eyes, as we pass through the country. It matters not what section we journey in, the same traits exist to a great extent. We find, ever and anon, a beautiful dwelling, with its outgrounds in perfect order and everything looking as if the rigid order, and taste of a man of refinement lived there; or perchance, some neat cottage shows itself, naif hidden in surrounding foliage, with green Venetian blinds, and flowering shrubs growing in wild profussion round about.—" Bural American." BECEIPTS FOE MAKING- PEACH WINE. During the last few years the practice of making peach wine by many pf our suburban and country-settlers, has been largely on the increase. It is by all means to be commended, not only as partaking of the character of a "local industry," but as providing a wholesome, economical, and pleasant beverage, in the place of drinks which are both expensive and injurious, but which, in the absence of more desirable drink, will always be largely made use of. The following are two receipts which have each been recommended as producing wine of a very pleasant description, and just at the present time, as there are such large quantities of ripe peaches at hand, we trust that many of our country readers who have not given the matter any attention, will not allow the present season to pass away without doing so.

Mr G-lenny, of Eptom, gives the following receipt: —Every morningl sent out my boys to shake the ripe fruit from the trees, and those that drop off they bring up to the house. The juice is then squeezed out of the peaches with the hands into a tub. This is continued for three or four days until there is sufficient juice to fill a ten gallon cask. There is then added four pounds of sugar to the gallon of juice. The juice is left to ferment for about forty eight hours, during which the pulp rises to the top. The liquid is then drawn off by means of a tap at the bottom of the vessel. When sufficient juice has been collected by this process to fill a cask, it.is placed in a cellar, where it is allowedlto

J remain several days, the bung merely resting in the aperture instead of being corked down tightly. After about four or five days the bung may be put in, and in ten or twelve months the wine is fit for use. No water is to be used. There are several kinds of peaches suitable for winemaking, but the best is that which first ripens. The peaches grown from stones without grafting are not used for wine. The Maori peaches or slip stones are used only for preserves. A settler residing in the northern part of the province sends another receipt, viz : Bruise the peaches to a pulp without breaking the stone, which might give the wine a bitter taste. Take equal quantities of the pulp and cold water, let is stand in a tub for two or three days, stir it frequently, then strain it till you get all the liquid from the stone and skins ; measure the liquidin a tub and add 3|lbs of sugar (at 5d or to each gallon; stir it frequently until the sugar is dissolved ; skim the froth off and strain it through a flannel bag; then put it in a cask till full, so that in fermenting the refuse may work through the bunghole; fermenting will commence without adding yeast; keep it constantly filled up. When it has done working, which will be in two or three weeks, stop it up close. In three months rack it off, strain the thick sediment through a flannel bag, then cask it up and stop it close. If possible provide suflicient of fruit to fill the casks after racking. MISCELLANEOUS. Feed the soil first —this will feed crops, cattle, and men. Paint of any sort laid on green timber rather hastens than arrests decay. A farmer in St. Lawrence Co., N.Y., made the best of butter all through dogdays, with the mercury at 90 degrees, by using large tin tanks, 28 by 40 inches, and setting his milk a foot deep. The tank he set in cold water, and thus kept his milk from 38 to 48 hours without souring. A farmer who kept a strict reckoning with his pigs found that a bushel of ground corn and the meal scalded is good for 201 b of pork. If the pig is fed on the cob it makes only 101 bor 121 bof work. The most money is made by getting a nine months' pig to weigh about 3 cwt. There has long been a general idea prevailing that anybody can be a farmer, that brains and knowledge are necessary for doctors, lawyers, and merchants but not for farmers. Tiais great mistake is slowly being corrected. It requires just as much sagacity to be successful in farming as in any other business profession. In the top dressing of meadows with compost we are adding to the soil, raising it and inviting the roots of the grass upwards, thus thickening the sod. This is the most precious of manures—this thick mat of roots and. compost. It will prolong the meadows, and add to the production of grain when ploughed. On a gravelly soil this compost will be improved if one of the principal ingredients is clay. A correspondent of the " Practical Farmer" writes :—Our practice has been to hitch one end of a common long chain, seven or eight feet long, to the whiffletree of the animal that travels in the furrow, while the other end was hitched to the plough beam, near the standard of the plough or just above the throat. . The chain need not be a very heavy one for any kind of ploughing. The end of the chain should be wrapped around the beam of the plough until the " bight" or bow of the chain will drag close to the haul the tops of any kind of herbage furrow-slice as it is turning over, and thus along in the furrow, just in time to be covered. In some instances it is necessary to pass a small rope, or a small chajjj, from the right handle of the plough to the " bight," or bow of the large chain, and draw it back towards the handle so that it will constantly drag on the furrow slice where it is turning. The ploughmen must adjust and readjust the chain, until it will draw every stalk-and spur of grass neatly under the falling furrow slice. The disease called rust in wheat and other graminiferous plants is caused by the presence of minute fungi, a natural order of plants of a very low type, many of them parasitic, and a great number of them poisonous. To Burn Stumps off Land : Bore a hole into the stump, fill it with coal oil, plug, and leave standing for three days. The oil will penetrate the wood, which when set on fire will burn until the stump i* consumed—so w e are told. We have not tried it.

In somelocalities large quantities of beer yeast are run off into sewers and wasted,. It contains from 7 to 11 per cent of nitrogen. M. Bernier mixes about 100 kilogrammes of the yeast with about 30 kilogrammes of quicklime and 10 of gypsum, and thus obtains a manure which may be used instead of guano. The great difficulty that agriculture labors under is the neglect of opportunities for making the knowledge and experience gained by one man available to others. A vast amount of useful information is lost to mankind from the fact that farmers seldom put the results of their experience in print. Knowledge, if not circulated, is like the talent buried in a napkin,