The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-02-05
SCIENTIFIC B0 TIER MAKING.


 SCIENTIFIC BJ TIER MAKING. From the New York Mall.
 There are good trusts and bad trusts. as the public was assured d few years ago. The whole strategy Of butter mak- ing. as the government defines it in one of it's admirable farmers buAetins,s IS based on the theory that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. Every pre- caution taken to insure cleanliness In the stable and the dairy Is for the purpose of excluding the bad bacteria, which would multiply rapidly in the warm and fractifying environment of fresh milk To this end the up-to-date dairyman will see that his cows have about 1,0O0 cubic feet of air apiece in the stable; that the ventilation is such that the air is changed every few minutes; that the barn floor is of concrete; that the barn interior is kept well covered with whitewash. that the milkers wear clean white suits. that the cows are curried some little while before milking; that the milk pails ale ot tin, kept clean by scalding.
 At thIs point enter the benignant bac- teria To get butter you must have sour cream. and that is the function Of be- nignant bacteria. Their malignant breth- ren will do the trick for you, but the but ter produced under their minstration will leave disagreeable flavor and to de- gree, an unwholesome effect. So the dairyman attends to the ''ripening of the cream by having ready a starter which is mingled with it; this is simply the curd of soured skim milk that has been kept clean. Butter properly produced from cream thus soured has, as the gov ernment puts 1t, "a rich, creamy flavor. or that nutty flavor which is a com bination of acid and other favors. Like the bouquet of wine, 1t is secured by a process of selection and elimination in fermenhng
 With all the elaborate stable contriv- ances to secure cleanliness there is noth- ing so satisfactory as milking the COW out in the pasture, in the old fashion. Nor, despite the ingenuity of countless inventors, is there anything so satisf,-st tory as the old barrel churn. There have been more patents taken out for churns than for any other one thing. The pur- pose of nearly all of them is to cut down the thirty or forty minutes which nature seems to have ordained should be spent in converting milk into butter. As this bull letln cheerfully observes, The one-mn- ute churn has been the goal" It adds "A careful analysis of the junk in the attic or storehouse of the average dairy man will reveal one or more relics of this kind" For effective butter making which is merely dashng together the minute globules of butter fat that exist In the cream so tilaI two or them au- here, and then dashing the larger mass against other masses similarly formed the barrel ehurn holds the field.
 Dairying is one of several matters in which the Department of Agriculture en- courages the elimination of the middle man. If there Is creamy near, it holcs that the dairyman will do better by sell ing fis milk there than by turning it into butter and selling 1t at the grocery VI town. Selling it at the grocery, it is api to comman2 only the average price c: other farm butter, to which it may be st. perior. and in summer, when the market is overstocked, Its price tumbles with the rest. By working up a private trade, however, and intelligently catering to !, the dairyman may always command be- ter than the grocery price.