In the earlier chapters of this work I have spoken to farmers and dairymen of the selection, care, and management, of dairy stock. The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters relate more especially to your department, and on your application and skill will depend chiefly the successful result of the dairy establishment. Of what avail are costly barns, well-selected cows, and judicious feeding, in the butter and cheese dairy, if the products are to be depreciated in value by the imperfect modes of preparing them for the market, where the final judgment is passed upon them, and where it is expected the price will be according to their value?

You have, doubtless, had a much greater practical knowledge and experience of the details of dairy management than I have. For this practice and experience I have the utmost respect; but I have not spoken without a knowledge of the subject. I have made many a cheese, and many a pound of butter, while my observations have extended over all the most important dairy districts of the country, and have not been limited to the practices of any one section, which, however good in themselves, may not be the best. I trust, therefore, you will excuse me for calling your attention to the more important points to which I have alluded; and, if my conclusions happen to differ from your own, in any respect, that you will not discard them as worthless, without first bringing them to the test of careful experiment, when I trust they will be found correct.

I have not written to establish any favorite theory, but simply to inculcate truth, and to aid in developing a most important branch of American industry, which, either directly or indirectly, involves the investment of a vast amount of capital, the aggregate profits of which depend so largely on your judgment and skill.

I need not remind you that any addition, however small, to the market value of each pound of butter or cheese, will largely increase the annual income of your establishment. Nor need I remind you that these articles are generally the last of either the luxuries or the necessaries of life in which city customers are willing to economize. They must and will have a good article, and are ready to pay for it in proportion to its goodness; or, if they desire to economize in butter, it will be in the quantity rather than the quality.

Poor butter is a drug in the market. Nobody wants it, and the dealer often finds it difficult to get it off his hands, when a delicate and finely-flavored article attracts attention and secures a ready sale. Some say that poor butter will do for cooking. But a good steak or mutton-chop is too expensive to allow any one to spoil it by the use of a poor quality of butter; and good pastry-cooks will tell you that cakes and pies cannot be made without good sweet butter, and plenty of it. These dishes relish too well, when properly cooked with nice butter, for any one to tolerate the use of poor butter in them.

On page 220 and elsewhere, I have dwelt on the necessity of extreme cleanliness in all the operations of the dairy; and this is the basis and fundamental principle of your business. I would not suppose, for a moment, that you are lacking in this respect. The enormous quantities of disgusting, streaky, and tallow-like butter that are daily thrust upon the seaboard markets must be due to the carelessness and negligence of heedless men, to exposure to sun and rain, to bad packing, and to delays in transportation. Many of these evils you may not be able to remove, since you cannot follow the article to the market, and see that it arrives safely and untainted. But you can take greater pains, perhaps, in some of the preliminary processes of making, and produce an article that will not be so liable to injure from keeping and transportation; and then, if fault is to be found, it does not rest with you.

I will not suggest the possibility that your ideas of cleanliness and neatness may be at fault; and that what may seem an excess of nicety and scrubbing to you may appear to be almost slovenliness to some others, whose butter receives the highest price in the market, and always finds the readiest sale. Permit me, however, to refer you to pages 300, 324, and 325, where a detailed account is given of the washings in water and washings in alkali; of the scrubbings, and the scourings, and the scaldings, and the rinsings, which the neat and tidy Dutch dairy-women give all the utensils of the dairy, from the pails to the firkins and the casks, and also to their extreme carefulness that no infectious odor rises from the surroundings. I think you will see that it is a physical impossibility that any taint can affect the atmosphere or the utensils of such a dairy, and that many of the details of their practice may be worthy of imitation in our American dairies.

And here allow me to suggest that, though we may not approve of the general management in any particular section, or any particular dairy, it is rare that there is not something in the practice of that section that is really valuable and worthy of imitation.

On pages 231 and 234 I have called your attention to the use of the sponge and clean cloth for absorbing and removing the butter-milk in the most thorough manner; this I regard as of great importance.

I have stated on page 234 that, under ordinarily favorable circumstances, from twelve to eighteen hours will be sufficient to raise the cream; and that I do not believe it should stand over twenty-four hours under any circumstances. This, I am aware, is very different from the general practice over the country. But, if you will make the experiment in the most careful manner, setting the pans in a good, airy place, and not upon the cellar bottom, I think you will soon agree with me that all you get, after twelve or eighteen hours, under the best circumstances, or at most after twenty-four hours, will detract from the quality and injure the fine and delicate aroma and agreeable taste of the butter to a greater extent than you are aware of. The cream which rises from milk set on the cellar bottom acquires an acrid taste, and can neither produce butter of so fine a quality or so agreeable to the palate as that which rises from milk set on shelves from six to eight feet high, around which there is a full and free circulation of pure air. The latter is sweeter, and appears in much larger quantities in the same time than the former.

If, therefore, you devote your attention to the making of butter to sell fresh in the market, and desire to obtain a reputation which shall aid and secure the quickest sale and the highest price, you will use cream that rises first, and that does not stand too long on the milk. You will churn it properly and patiently, and not with too great haste. You will work it so thoroughly and completely with the butter-worker, and the sponge and cloth, as to remove every particle of butter-milk, never allowing your own or any other hands to touch it. You will keep it at a proper temperature when making, and after it is made, by the judicious use of ice, and avoid exposing it to the bad odors of a musty cellar. You will discard the use of artificial coloring or flavoring matter, and take the utmost care in every process of making. You will stamp your butter tastefully with some mould which can be recognized in the market as yours; as, for instance, your initials, or some form or figure which will most please the eye and the taste of the customer. You will send it in boxes so perfectly prepared and cleansed as to impart no taste of wood to the butter. If all these things receive due attention, my word for it, the initials or form which you adopt will be inquired after, and you will always find a ready and a willing purchaser at the highest market price.

But, if you are differently situated, and it becomes necessary to pack and sell as firkin-butter, let me suggest the necessity of an equal degree of nicety and care in preparation, and that you insist, as one of your rights, that the article be packed in the best of oak-wood firkins, thoroughly prepared after the manner of the Dutch, as stated on page 325. A greater attention to these points would make the butter thus packed worth several cents a pound more when it arrives in the market than it ordinarily is. Indeed, the manner in which it not infrequently comes to market is a disgrace to those who packed it; and it cannot be that such specimens were ever put up by the hands of a dairy-woman. I have often seen what was bought for butter open so marbled, streaked, and rancid, that it was scarcely fit to use on the wheels of a carriage.

If you adopt the course which I have recommended in regard to skimming, you will have a large quantity of sweet skimmed milk, far better than it would be if allowed to stand thirty-six or forty-eight hours, as is the custom with many. This is too valuable to waste, and it is my opinion that you can use it to far greater profit than to allow it to be fed to swine. There can be no question, I think, that cheese-making should be carried on at the same time with the making of butter, in small and medium-sized dairies. You have seen, in Chapter XI., that some of the best cheese of Holland is made of sweet skim-milk. The reputation of Parmesan—a skim-milk cheese of Italy, page 266—is world-wide, and it commands a high price and ready sale. The mode of making these varieties has been described in detail in the ninth and eleventh chapters; and you can imitate them, or, perhaps, improve upon them, and thus turn the skim-milk to a very profitable account, if it is sweet and good. You will find, if you adopt this system, that your butter will be improved, and that, without any great amount of extra labor, you will make a large quantity of very good cheese, and thus add largely to the profit of your establishment, and to the comfort and prosperity of your family.

But, if you devote all your attention to the making of cheese, whether it is to be sold green, or as soon as ripe, or packed for exportation, I need not say that the same neatness is required as in the making of butter. You will find many suggestions in the preceding pages on the mode of preparation and packing, which I trust will prove to be valuable and applicable to your circumstances. There is a general complaint among the dealers in cheese that it is difficult to get a superior article. This state of things ought not to exist. I hope the time is not far distant when a more general attention will be paid to the details of manufacture, and let me remind you that those who take the first steps in improvement will reap the greatest advantages.