The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1911-05-04
FARMrGREW EVERYTHING
That Was the Way it Seemed to New
England Boy rs Years Ago.
boston Sunday Herald

Books about colonial times always lay
stress on one feature of life in those
early days, and that is that each farm
supplied to those who lived on it all
things needful for life. The farmer
grew and ground his own corn and wheat
and raised and spun his own wool and
made his own cloth.
So far as raising all the necessaries of
life goes, it is not so many years since
farms of that type still existed in New
England. They produced their own beef,
mutton and pork and slaughtered the
animals themselves; raised their own
wheat and sent it to the mill to be
ground; cultivated, of course, their own
Vegetables, as they made their own but
ter and cheese. The farmer of even rs
years ago had sheep, sheared them him
self and sacked the wool for market.
Cloth making was beyond him. Flax he
did not grow and cotton was an lmposSsl-
lity. The sugar problem was met by the
maple tree.
The boy particularly remembers this
last feature of the farm he lived on more
than 25 years ago. He was city boy,
with only such knowledge of country
life as he had gathered in the small towns
he had summered in. Maple sugar he
knew, but as luxury. Here in this
corner of northern Vermont he found
a place where there were two bowls OF
sugar, one of white and one of maple.
The hired men and the family, except
the women folks, were expected to use
the maple; the boy, as assort of paying
guest was privileged to use the white,
an opportunity of which he never awaited
himself.
BIG BARREL IN PANTRY.
That maple sugar was kept IN great
barrel in the pantry, and when the chance
came there were nuggets of maple sugar
as big as the small boys hand to be dug
out. The barrel was only small part
of the years output of the hundreds of
trees that formed the 10 sugar orchards
on the place In addition roadside trees
and sugar naples about the house were
tapped, for the farmer in that far corner
of Vermont was thrifty even if he was
prosperous.
The best instance, perhaps, of how
dependent on itself such farm was, is
furnished by the question of the meat
supply. In the two summers the boy lived
there he rarely had fresh meat, save
chicken. The nearest town with which
the farm folks traded was four or more
!lilltS dW anu nv lllCdl Sdl iHduS a
regular route in warm days. Houses
We're too far apart. demand too small
and ice too scarce to warrant it. More
over in summer time horses were too
busy to drive in town.
The result was that the family of six
father, mother and four children-the
four hired men, the one hired girl and
the boy lived for the most part on salt
pork for meat. Salt pork in fact, ap-
peared on the table, with rare exceptions,
three times day. Salt pork, with cream
gravy is delectabe dish, and no one
appeared to find monotony in the dish.
Sunday dinner furnished one of the
rare Interruptions of the salt lork diet.
If nothing else afforded itself chickens
We're always ready for sacrifice. An
other exception came with the killing of
a calf. Veal appeared then in more
forms than the unskilled would have
thought calf could assume.
But these were minor incidents to the
boy. There were always new wonders
that kept him busy, and just the looking
into them helped to develop an appetite
that could content itself with vegetables,
pie, salt pork, or whatever was on the
table.
SWEET CREAM FOR POTATOES.
Ii was then that he first learned that
sweet cream was the best accompani-
ment of a properly baked potato. Cream
was no luxury of the rich on that farm.
There Were 40 or more cows, and pint
OF cream was merely an incident.
This was IN part due to the fact that
cheese was a summer product of the
farm. Even in those days there were
not many farms where cheese was made,
ThIS foy ctnal- 10
and was helped in that determination by
the fact that he found ready market
for all his dairy product.
Cheese factories and creameries were
scorned. In place of the easy way of
selling the milk in bulk there was the
actual work of making butter so long as
cool weather held, and of making cheese
each day in summer. The separator had
not then appeared and there We're prob
lens ir handling the milk that We're hard
to solve in summer.
For that reason the boy seldom saw the
Oldest horse in the place led into the big
back room and tied in the tread-m that
was connected with the dasher of the big
churn. But he did see and learn to know
the delights of every stage of home
cheese making.
1t is true that these delights were
largely connected with eating, Tor from
the time the curd first begins to form
until the finished product is put away on
the shelves of the cheese room there is
always something about it good to eat.
The long vat was filled with milk each
morning, the rennet added and then as it
curdled and the solid matter rose to the
top the farmer or his wife with wooden
paddle divided the half solid, half liquid
curd into rectangles and the whey was
allowed to run off. 1t was hand pressure
that forced out the remaining whey and
left the first eatable product for the boy.
That was curd pure and simple, unsalted,
but delicious if you could get it. There
followed the process of adding salt, and
perhaps one day in five sage, and then
the curd grew in deliciousness.
PRESSING THE CHEESE.
The next step was the pressing. An
old-fashioned hand-press, which somehow
seems oddly suggestive of an old wood
cut of the beginnings of printing, save
that the cheese curd was in round re-
ceptacle.
1t was when the cheese came out of
the press that it furnished its third thing
good to eat That was the edge that was
trimmed off before the buttered cloth
was frightened about it and it was put
aWaV TO he t1lrnet} daiIv and rinan for