Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1886-08-20
10 tie Elitor of the Herald:

Unity NudJ TIE farmers III NOrLEeIH
Vermont proceed at once to change
their system OF butter-making and
go into erecting creameries aud
cheese factories. That the old way
of making Lutter-evcry woman
her own butter makeT-was among
the things of the past, as much as
reaping grain with a sickle or now
ing smooth fields of grass with the
old-fashiOned scythe. l was re-
peatedly asked the value of the
buildings and machinery to make
500 to 1000 pounds of butter a d ay,
which | could not then give; l have,
since my return, obtained iuforma-
tion upon this point, and with your
kindness give 1t through your col
ums that it may reach many who
must at no distant date become in.
terested in this question, or plod
along with those who have no love
for the lively shilling, and no capac-
ity for the slow one.
A new creamery has been built
and started up at Baldwin, Wis,
this season. The cream is gathered
and worked from six hundred cows;
the product is three thousand
pounds of butter n week. The
buildings consist of main building
2Ox32 feet, and IA feet posts with
lean-to 12x24 for engine room. The
outfit is that most used, furnished
by Davis & Rankin of Chicago,
consisting of three large rcfrigera-
tor tanks for gathering cream, hold
ing two hundred gallons each; two
large watts for cooling cream and one
large two hundred gallon churn and
one butter worker, which, with
other smaller articles equally neces-
sary but going with the outfit, all
cost, with machinery in place to at
tach to power, a little less than
$1,000. This being the first year
and the country not being fully sup
piled with cows, three teams are sent
out from ten to twelve miles on one
road and back on another, and the
farmers are served three times a
week, making six routes. They eX-
pect i'll two years to have twelve
thousand COWS on the same route.
The farmers are to no expense eX-
cept for one Cooley can for each
two COWS, and water tight tank to
set them in. The man who gathers
the cream does the skimming. The
butter is all sold as fast as made at
five cents pound above price of
best dairy butter. This is y stock
company. The price paid for cream
to make Il pound of butter (being
one inch by Il standard gauge is the
price the best dairy butter brings in
the markets covered by the route.
a cooperative company would be
much better for the farmers, as the
difference in price of creamery and
dairy butter is big revenue to- the
factory, and the farmer should take
it in. First-class groccrS, cast and
west, have learned the value of hay
ing every day in the year a uniform
grade of butter This they can
never have in dairy butter. While
many dairies may be all choice, no
two can be said to be alike, so, at
this time, when tastes are exacting,
the only safe way is to reject dairy
/ butter entirely; this forces the best
of it to take inferior rank in the
market; so Vermont, instead of hold
ing the high rank she so nobly held
ten years since, is today rankin 6
way behind many states in which no
butter could be found fit for table
use until creamerles were introduced.
At the Worlds Fair in New Or
leans, III competition with all the
states, and every package stripped
of every vestige of identity, Mime
soto carried off twenty-one butter
premiums, including the Grand
Sweepstake and Gold Medal, and
was awarded in money premiums
$l,589,5O on her dairy products.
The butter produced in Minnesota
! in 1888 was twenty-three millions
pounds, and this year will amount
to fully one-third more, and ten
/ years ago a spoon was often seen on
the butter plate.
With the advantages of the West
in fertile soil, cheap food and cheap
transportation to the East, it is not
surprising that Vermont farmers
shrink from making expenditures to
keep up with the times, but Is it not