Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1886-03-24
A Cream Gathering Creamery
The Cold Brook at Franklin,

Manchester, IN. H. Mirror and Farmer.
We have found what we have been hunt
ing for in New Hampshire for some time,
cream gathering cooperative creamery,
In which could be tested the question
whether this or the milk gathering cream
cry was best for the farmers of the back
towns of this State, Vermont and Maine,
for as it seems to us the question in re.
gard to creameries in general has already
been settled. The butter of the future is
to be the product of the creamery. No
daryman making butter in a small way
and bv old methods at home can compete
with the creamery. He cannot make as
good an article: he cannot make it at so
small cost, and he cannot begin to sell
it for as much. Indeed, he must sell in
competition with the various patent but
ters that. in spite of legislation, public
prejudice and all else, flood the markets
and probably always will, and this is sim
ply ruinous. No man can live by making
butter from cream and selling it in COM
petition with that made from lard Our
investigation leads us to the conclusion
that there is at least difference enough be
tween the price of creamery and even fine
homemade butter to pay the entire ex-
pense OF manufacturing and marketing the
creamery product. and that at the least
farmers can rid themselves of this trouble
and expense by cooperation. The next
thing we want to know is what class of
creameries are best. This. we take it, de-
ponds largely upon the location, or in other
words upon the value of the skinned milk.
To illustrate, creamery in the vicinity of
a large city. where market can be found
for skinned milk at cent a quart, can
probably do better by its patrons
by taking their whole milk, sell
ing the butter and afterwards the skim
med milk; but in the back districts, where
SKINNED milk could hardly be sold at
anv price. it would seem to be better to
leave it on the farm and send only the
cream to the factory, especially if the far
mer must carry his milk several miles and
then carry it back after the cream is taken
| from it, in order to get anything out of it,
The Cold Brook Creamery at Franklin
is on the cream gathering plan, and though
in its infancy is able to show very satisfac-
tory results and seems to be one which it
is safe to copy. 1t is owned by about
twenty men, Hon. Warren F. Daniell
| uo 10 ptCcluCut vi lut dssbCidtlOI. UtltiS
the leading spirit. The shares are
$50 each and the plant represents an in
vestment of about $4,000, interest on
which is of course, reckoned among the
other expenses. Franklin and vicinity is
not a great dairy region and the farmers
there were rather shy of investing in such
an enterprise. so it was long time get
ting under way, and the twenty stockhol-
ders are scattered through several towns,
some of them living six or eight miles
away; serious disadvantage. as it large
| ly increases the cost of gathering the
cream. The building is located on
side hill so as to show one story in the rear
and two in front. It looks like an ordina-
nv tenement house but is perfectly adapt
ed to the business. The machinery con-
sists of boiler. which furnishes what
steam is needed. three watts or tanks for
holding the cream. two swing churns and
butter bench and worker. The cream
watts have iron pipes running through them
and by filling these with cold water or
steam the cream is cooled or heated to the
required temperature, when it is run in
tin trough into the churns. Everything is
done by machinery except packing the
butter.
| The butter, which is mostly made into
prints, is sold in Concord. Manchester
and Boston. where it is handled by com.
mission merchants. Mr.. Thurston, the
bu,ter-maker. learned his trade in the
creamery at Mapping, Conn.,, which has
reputation as least as high as any in New
England, and appears to be master of the
business. He starts under several disad-
vantages, among which are the small
number of patrons, the long distance
they live from the creamery and the fact