The islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1891-1899, 1894-12-06
BUTTER PACKAGES.


ages No article of the farm is so apt to
take its fl,ivnr from the wood in which
| it is packed as butter and during the
not season of the year butter frequently
heeos.les rancid or loses much of it's fine
flavor through contact with the wooden
cub In the curly days of dairying the
farmers hal plenty of wood to select
from. and l. was all extremely cheap.
and they always careful to take
only such woods as were naturally sweet
and best for manufacturing butter pack
| ages and tubs. Their tubs and firkins
were made by hand and not by machin-
| cry. and they were made with such
Scrupulous care that butter could be
| shipped and kept comparatively well in
| them
Butter tubs and firkins are not today
| made from the BEST woods and the cheap
ones are very frequently made from such
| woods as containinate the butter. and
| give it bitter and strange flavor Not
little of the finest butter sent to mar
ket is ruined through contact with the
wooden packages. In addition to this,
the wool absorbs the preserving and
sweet qualities from the butter, making
it possible for the butter to spoil rapidly
in warm weather This may be seen by
turning tn butter out of tab where it
has stood for a long time. Wherever the
butter has come in contact with the
wood it has turned white, and it must be
scraped off before the butter is sold.
Butter that is shipped to other coun-
tries always runs a risk of spelling by
being packed in the wooden tubs or any
other material capable of absorbing the
brine and salt. Butter of superior
quality is ruined if packed in tubs made
of poor. cheap wood, and it is frequently
damaged if packed in the very best
wooden tubs. The price of the best
wood makes it Impossible to manufac-
ture tubs out of it for the small sum OBJ
tainable for butter frlins and tubs.
But there is loss in other ways as well
There is always more or less waste but
ter in the tubs. which must be scraped
out and thrown away or used for frying
purposes. This does not amount to
much in each tub. but when a number
are sent at once several pounds of this
waste product is found. The loss from
shrinkage is likewise considerable. A
leakage and soakage allowance is al
ways made by law. and this sometimes
amounts to considerable
Some of the tubs that come from the
large factories are made of such cheap
wood that dealers in the butter dump
out the product when it reaches them
and scrape off from the sides and bottom
frequently from two to four pounds, to
rid it of woody flavor and package faint
AS this is generally charged to the pro-
Queer, it will be seen that nearly all of
these losses come directly home to the
dairyman. The possibility of these losses,
great or small, opens an avenue for un-
scrupulous dealers to deduct more from
the leakage allowance than is true. They
can easily report losses which no man
can disprove.
Butter tubs and packages of the future
must be made out of material other than
wood. In supplying few private Gus
toners with butter | have adopted a
plan of my own which seems to work
we'll have number of tin packages,
holding five pounds each, made, and
into these pack the butter for city use.
Twenty of these are packed in strong
wooden case for shipment The air
space thus formed between the wooden
case and the tin boxes protects the but
ter from heat and air influences. have
found that butter packed in this way
Keeps much longer and better than when
,acked in tubs, and the finest quality of
he best butter is retained indefinitely
might well be matter of considera-
ion for dairymen to adopt some such
method of butter packing in the near
'uture Tin is used for milking pals
md pans. ana in nearly every part of
he country, and there seems to be no
reason why the butter should not be
marketed in the same way, with
simple wooden box to protect it,
BANKING UP CELERY.
Here at the station for the past three
years we have been raising our celery in
beds about four feet wide, and the plants
six inches by one foot apart. tells E. G.
Greene, of the Ohio station, in Ohio
Farmer This method. by the way, pos
sesses some advantages that are not
gained by the usual way of planting in
rows. The way of handling, as thus de-
scribed by well known writer on rural
subJects-"the gardener now gets on
his knees, straddling the row and gath
ering up all the stalks of one plant after
another in his left hand. packs the soil
firmly around with his right to retain
them in Il compact and erect position
seemed to be out of place in our beds. so
we tried string. by winding one around
each plant and then going on to the next,
the stalks in place.
This was decided improvement over
the way of holding the stalks in place by
earth until the rest of the soil was put
in, but when it came to taking the string
off the soil would be tramped around the
plants and the leaves and upper parts Of
the stalks would be torn off, and the
time 1t took in removing it made us al
most want to go back to the way OF
holding it up with our hands. All sorts
of suggestions were made to get rid Of
the trouble of taking off the string, nm
I'll some one thought that paper string
would do. and it would rot off and not
hurt the plant.
We put it on several thousand plants
and then waited to see if any injury was
done. When the plants We're taken out
for winter it was found that very little
injury was done and this happened by
the careless putting on of the string.
The plants were held in position by the
string until a rain came and settled the
dirt r.,1,nd the plaut and wet the string