Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-07-02
A MODERN CREAMERY.
Perfection of the Creamery Process of
Making Primo Butter.

cry every morning. Dozens of farm
wagons arc waiting to deliver their
loads of milk. One after another drives
up to the receiving platform, the farmer
sets out his cans and a man counts
them and marks the number down
upon a tab. If there is acan only par
TALLY full'the man measures its con-
tents with a stick and in two seconds
has jotted down the number of gallons.
The farmer then empties can after can
into the adjacent vat, passes the empty
cans to the receiver. who scalds them
in hot water and dry steam and slides
them out on another platform. whence
the farmer takes them a few moments
later. Thus the wagons come and go,
and into the big watts pour the previous
days product Of a thousand cows.
Butter-making in a modern cream
cry is a simple process. 1t beats the
old dairy method as a railway train
skips by a stage coach. Nowadays the
milk is not allowed to stand for the
cream to rise. No housewife IN
around with her skimming spoon to re-
move the cream. There is no residue
of rancid milk or buttermilk. The
cool, white fluid from the farmers cans
flows directly into a cylinder whose in
terror is a cone revolving a thousand
times a minute. This machine is called
a centrifugal and it's office is the separ-
alton Of the cream from the milk. 1t
does its work simply, quickly and per-
fectly. The motion of the cone causes
the milk to rise in a perpendicular col
umn against the wall of the cylinder,
but the cream, being lighter than the
milk, remains nearer the cone; while
the heavier and creamless milk seeks
the outside. For illustration: Plac e
n bucket within another; the outer
one is the milk, the inner one the
cream. Into the chamber dip two
pipes, with their open ends striking the
tops OF the walls of the cream and
milk. Through one pipe the motion
OF the machine sends the milk flying in
a steady stream to the cheese-room to
be made into unlovely and dyspepsia
breeding skim-cheese, while through
the other flows creamy current, sweet
and fragrant, to a nearby vat. The
milk the farmer brought has not been
five minutes out of his wagon be-
fore that has been accomplished
which the dairy-maid spends a day or
more in doing. The cream has been
instantly separated from the milk with
out standing, souring or skimming and
without mourning the usual dairy dam
gers of change in temperature, thunder
storms, cats, dogs, small boys, flies,
bugs, proximity to onions, Goldfish,
vegetables or musty wood. There is,
in fact, a steady stream of cream flow
ing from the cans through the wonder
full separator to the watts where the
cream, dripping over a coil of pipes
through which cold spring water is
passing, is still further cooled. In the
watts are pipes with spring water,
and after Il half hours standing the
fragrant mass is ready for the c6urn.
The remainder of the operation is
quite as simple as the foregoing. Large
s~team-turned churns soon make the
butter come" and by contrast remind
the visitor of the three-hour struggle
he had in his boyhood with the das6er
OF his mothers stone churn in his tired
and blistered hands.
When the golden product leaves the
big churn there is small residue in the
shape of buttermilk. No fishing around
in the sour mass for stray pieces of
butter, no straining of the remainder
for fragments too small to be caught
with a ladle. Nor is there any dairy
maid, with more or less clean hands,
to "work" the butter and laboriously
press out the buttermilk. Revolving
for a few moments upon the table Of
the machine butter-worker the sixty
pounds of creamery gives forth a few
spoonfuls of milk. 1t is then packed
away in the spring house until the fol-
lowing morning, when it is "worked''
again, Ashton salt being added in the
proportion of an ounce to the pound,
and it is then ready for the market.
Prime butter it is, too-fit for the table
of a king.
1t is not surprising that the creamery
can make the best butter. Its propri-
etors take pains to see that the cows
are properly fed and cared for; they
require that the animal heat shall be
taken away from the milk as quickly
as possible, and that the milk be kept
cool and sweet until it arrives at the
factory; the centrifugal separator OBJ
viates the, necessity of having milk
stand about for many hours, and also
makes perfect separation possible.
Throughout the entire process there is
the utmost cleanliness and uniformity.
The centrifugals, watts, churns and inn
plements are frequently washed with
hot water and scalded with dry steam.
The cream is always churned at the
same temperature, and the butter and
salt are alike carefully weighed before
mixing. All over the cemented floor
of the factory flows fresh spring water,
keeping the place always cool and
sweet.
Everybody's mother used to make
the best butter in the neighborhood and
always got two cents a pound more
than any one else, butnobody's mother
ever made butter equal to creamery
first. Butter-making is like photogra-
ply, in that there are a hundred condi-
tions necessary to insure perfect re-
suit, and failure in any n particular
is likely to prove disastrous. Only the
professional butter-maker in command
of all the appliances and conveniences
known to the art can hope to reach
perfection every day in the year. May
the creamery live long and prosper