The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1890-11-28
A CHAPTER ON cHURNS.
Prof Henry OF the Wisconsin Experi-
Inent Station Gives His Views.

froE. Henry OF the Wisconsin Experi-
Inent Station Gives His Views.
Will the time ever come when a
patent is not issued every day in the
! gear for some new kind of churn or
farm gate? Judging from present ap-
| pearances there are just as many men
now as ever in the past who are perfect
ly confident they have the best and
only perfect churn. Almost every sum-
mer here at Madison strangers move
into some otherwise unoccupied store
room on the leading street and keep
'open house" the long season through.
The sole object of interest they have
on exhibit is some wonderful churn,
| and daily cream is turned into butter
with lightning-like rapidity before the
eyes of the gaping crowd. Only a couple
of years since parties doing business in
| this way gave churning exhibitions,
and in the presence of two of the high
est officials in our State turned cream
into butter in two minutes by the
watch, and what seems to me much
harder thing to do, they obtained the
signatures of these two parties to a
statement of the fact, this amounting
PAoSOhSoilJ W AhbOL VI VIC
churn. Now, it is fact that these
parties turned cream into butter in
about two minutes. Was this churn,
therefore, an improvement over the Or
, binary churns?
| To test the matter we sent our dairy
man down one day and had him pur-
chase churn without telling the pro-
! prietor whom he represented or what
| was to be done with it. We took a
quantity of cream and divided it into
two equal parts by weight and put one
half into the new claimant and turned
the other into our rectangular churn,
which had been doing service for sew
eral seasons. Both churns were worked
according to directions and treated SO
as to get the best results possible, so
far as we knew. What was the out
come? The novelty, which had brought
| butter in the presence of hundreds in
two minutes, not milo and half
away, now came out two minutes be-
hind the other churn and did not de-
liver quite as much butter, though
probably the difference was accidental.
| Where was the discrepancy? The
whole matter was plain to us when we
recollected that the parties operating
the churn in the city never churned but
! two or three quarts of cream, and that
they made the paddles go so fast that
| they beat the little mass of cream into
| butter in mo time" When the churn
was given a reasonable amount of work
| to do it did no better, and even not
| quite so we'll, as q much simpl Or inStru-
| ment.
After having looked over many of the
new inventions have come to the con-
| clusion that we have reached the limit
| of progress in churns along the present
| line. OF course, new direc lions are
opening up-the butter extractor, for
exam ple-but do not believe there has
been single lvance made in the COM
mon churn for more than decade ex-
cept in regard to the covers, which have
been materially improved. The best
churn to buy is the simplest; this is a
| simple box or barrel that turns over and
| over.
In buying churn of this class see
that it is strongly bound together, SO
that the falling cream will not pound
| it to pieces. Next look to the OPEN
| ing, which should be ample-the larger
the better-in order to remove the but
ter easily and to facilitate washing and
airing. See that the cover is easily
managed and fits closely. Some of the
late improvements in the covers of
barrel and box churns are very salts
factory. Barrel and box churns are the
simplest in construction and ccnse-
quently the lowest in price of any on
the market, so that the best is not only
the cheapest but also the lowest priced.
Avoid all churns with inside fixtures,
such as dashers, paddles and scrapers. A
churn with these paddles IN turns outno
more butter and makes it no easier than
a revolving churn. They are difficult
to wash and keep clean. All churns
with paddles require bearings; these
grind up the cream into grease and
blacken it, often making the butter
unsightly. Many of the patents on
churns are for devices to aerate the
cream. Most of these are simply ridic-
ulous If we wish to get air through
the cream we can do it most effectuall
by having it tumble about in a revolv-
ing barrel or box.
We are apt to grumble about taxes;
there is no tax that rests so heavily
upon our shoulders as that laid by ig-
norance. Every year oily-tonguet
agents take from our people, for which
nothing is given in return, moro money
than State, county and town taxes
combined amount to. One of the most
common of these agents is the man with
the patent churn.-W. A. Henry, in
Breeders Gazette.
A Picket Gauge.