Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1908. OUR DISTRICT.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43340, 20 June 1908, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1908. OUR DISTRICT.

this above all—to thine own self be true , And xt must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

* ♦ — PAST, PRESENT, & FUTURE. (Written specially for the Te Aroha ' News.) THE DAIRYMAN’S PRIDE. TE COOPERATIVE DAIRY COMPANY [A.B.— Copyright.] I had seen other sorts of factories for the manufacture of jam, clothing, or boots, but this being a 'butter factory, and situated in the midst of the paddocks, with the lark overhead, and the smell of a thousand outdoor perfumes abroad, was something wholly different. I had seen also something of other sorts of dairies, both Old World and Dominion, individual dairies I'mean, with all their individual outlay of toil. But this with its centralized, and economized labour, with the throb, throb, of its great twelve horse-power Tangye engine, and its 25 horse-power Babcock Wilcox boiler was a new thing under the sun to me. There was a well of course, of such copious supply that it might have kept the servants of the patriarchs quarrelling for generations over its twenty thousand gallons of water per day. One might have wondered how such a quantity of water could be employed, until one saw the cleaning operations in full swing,Rafter the morning’s skimming and churning. And there was a refrigerator, with its matting of snow on the pipes, and a surrounding temperature all its own. I was informed that it was a three' ton Humble Refrigerator—l wouldn’t have disputed, it for anything. That it could convey '

its reduced teraparture to any. part of the factory where winter weather was required merely by the means of snake-like ammonia coils, using up the same ammonia again and again, was enough to reduce one to the feelings of the Queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon. The man who could invent such things might have invented Latin or Euclid ! In view of the 3,300 gallons of milk which comes in daily from the twenty-eight suppliers in the season’s flush, it is not surprising that three Alfa Laval Separators, with their 5,600 revolutions per minute, are required to attend to the skimming. The butter factory at Waihou is the base, and largest skimming station of the Te Aroha District Cooperative Dairying Company, but the Company has in addition four other stations. One is situated at Te Aroha West, and has a daily turnover of 1,800 gallons of milk. Another is located at Mangaiti, and has a daily contribution of 1,200 gallons per day. Still another at Mangawhera accounts for 800 gallons daily, and finally one at Waitoa disposes of t4OO gallons. When you realize that it is a co-operative concern, that the suppliers are practically the owners of the plant, you begin to understand how first-rate is the basis on which the dairying industry is now carried on compared with the old basis of the farmer’s wives doing all the skimming and churning by hand, with a fearfully uncertain market to offer it in when made.

Looking upon the two huge churns as they revolve round and round in the process of being washed out, making one think of nothing if not of a house set spinning on a swivel, inclines one to transpose Lewis Carrol’s lines and ask :

“ If forty maids with forty churns ” or four hundred for the matter of that, were set to work on this great quantity of cream which the cream vats contain,

“ Now wouldn’t that be mad ?”

Obviously it does require.adequate churning appliances to negotiate those two tanks of cream. I wonder had the historic and Epicurean Duke of Clarence known of such things would he have chosen more Malmsey wine to be drowned in ? The churns may be considered adequate, for they will treat one thousand pounds of butter each. It is a principle in the manufacture of butter to obviate the necessity of handling it. Here, for instance, is the round working table where two hundred pounds of butter fat can be dealt with at once, by machinery of course. At present like the churns it is undergoing the cleansing process. Here again is the chilling room where the butter is stored at the present, awaiting its turn to be worked up into those neat, white papered, oblong pounds one secs in, the town shops. It looks most delicious in the great nuggety masses seven hundred weight of it. Perhaps no feature of all this throbbing, singing factory will interest you more than the butter pounder—it is such a “cunning contrivance. Let me attempt to describe it: In appearance it resembles a scrupulously clean sink, with its draining board, made of wooden rollers to the left of it. But this draining board arrangement is level with the bottom of the sink, and the butter, after being placed in the sink in one huge lump is pushed automatically out upon the rollers, through three holes in the sink—it looks for all the world like three bars of soap. A kind of open lid, composed of wires is next pressed down upon the three bars of butter, cutting them into pound lengths, as you may have seen soap cut by means of string. The pounds are easily slipped apart upon the moveable rollers, and are then lifted on the wrapping table and papered for the cases. One thousand pounds can be cut up, papered, and put into the cases ready for despatch in one hour with three men operating.