Part 13

_Variety 9._ CHEESY BUTTER.—Cream comes quicker by being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt to separate and deposit a _whey_: if this is strained into the churn with the cream, the butter will have a strong cheesy flavor.

_Variety 10._ GRANULATED BUTTER.—When, in winter, sweet cream is over-heated, preparatory to churning, it produces butter full of _grains_, as if there were meal in it.

_Variety 11._—In this we will comprise the two opposite kinds—_too salt_ and _unsalted butter_. We have seen butter exposed for sale with such masses of salt in it that one is tempted to believe that it was put in as a make-weight. When the salt is coarse, the operation of eating this butter affords those who have good teeth, a pleasing variety of grinding.

_Variety 12._ LARD BUTTER.—When lard is cheap and abundant, and butter rather dear, it is thought profitable to combine the two.

_Variety 13._ MIXED BUTTER.—When the shrewd housewife has several separate churnings of butter on hand, some of which would hardly be able to go alone, she puts them together, and those who buy, find out that “Union is _strength_!” Such butter is pleasingly marbled; dumps of white, of yellow, and of dingy butter melting into each other, until the whole is ring-streaked and speckled.

_Variety 14._ COMPOUND BUTTER.—By compound butter we mean that which has received contributions from things animate and inanimate; feathers, hairs, rags of cloth, threads, specks, chips, straws, seeds; in short, everything is at one time or another to be found in it, going to produce the three successive degrees of dirty, filthy, nasty.

_Variety 15._ TOUGH BUTTER.—When butter is worked too long after the expulsion of buttermilk, it assumes a gluey, putty-like consistence, and is tough when eaten. But, oh blessed fault! we would go ten miles to pay our admiring respects to that much-to-be-praised dairy-maid whose zeal leads her to work her butter too much! We doubt, however, if a pound of such butter was ever seen in this place.

Besides all these, whose history we have correctly traced; besides butter tasting of turpentine from being made in pine churns; butter bent on travelling, in hot weather; butter dotted, like cloves on a boiled ham, with flies, which Solomon assures us causeth the ointment to stink; besides butter in rusty tin pans, and in dirty swaddling clothes; besides butter made of milk drawn from a dirty cow, by a dirtier hand, into a yet dirtier pail, and churned in a churn the dirtiest of all; besides all these sub-varieties, there are several others with which we have formed an acquaintance, but found ourselves baffled at analysis. We could not even guess the cause of their peculiarities. Oh Dr. Liebig! how we have longed for your skill in analytic chemistry! What consternation would we speedily send among the slatternly butter-makers, revealing the mysteries of their dirty doings with more than mesmeric facility!

And now, what on earth is the reason that good butter is so great a rarity? Is it a hereditary curse in some families? or is it a punishment sent upon us for our ill-deserts? A few good butter-makers in every neighborhood are a standing proof that it is nothing but bad housewifery; mere sheer carelessness which turns the luxury of the churn into an utterly nauseating abomination.

Select cows for quality and not for quantity of milk; give them sweet and sufficient pasturage; keep clean yourself; milk into a clean pail; strain into clean pans—(pans scalded, scoured, and sunned, and if tin, with every particle of milk rubbed out of the seams.) While it is yet sweet, churn it; if it delays to come, add a little saleratus; work it thoroughly, three times, salting it at the second working; put it into a cool place, and then, when, with a conscience as clean and sweet as your butter, you have dispatched your tempting rolls to market, you may sit down and thank God that you are an honest woman!

CINCINNATI, THE QUEEN CITY.

Whatever may have been the squealing celebrity of Porkopolis, Cincinnati seems destined to merge the glory of that name in the more agreeable title, City of Vineyards. That she is the Queen City none denies. But on account of what single excellence, it might be difficult, for some, to say. A queen of slaughter-pens might he a hearty buxom lass, but, withal, not exactly the personage for which knights (Sancho always excepted) love to break lances. A queen of foundries and stithies, she might be, and not necessarily, on that account, a ruddy brunette; inasmuch as Sir Vulcan was, once before, the husband of Venus—queen of beauty. A blushing queen of strawberry beds would be quite romantic; but yet more appropriate if her jurisdiction were extended over vines and purple clusters and vineyards and orchards. But whether it be pork, or iron, or gardens, or vineyards, or observatories, Cincinnati is acknowledged on all hands to be the Queen City.

Leaving her commercial glories out of view, we think Cincinnati has done more for horticulture than any American city, taking into the account her recent origin and her means. In all other cities horticulture has been the child of wealth and leisure. It has _followed_ commercial or manufacturing prosperity. But in this city, it began with them and kept pace with them; so that one wonders which most to admire, the thrift of industry and skill, or the elegant taste which is so generally evinced in the cultivation of fruit, and shrub and flower.

The first volume of the Transactions of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society, is eminently worthy of that enterprising corporation.

The thoughts of several principal friends of horticulture seem much directed to the subject of vine culture, and the manufacture of wine. There are more than eighty-three vineyards in the vicinity of the city containing not far from 400 acres of land! From 114 acres during the season of 1845, more than 23,000 gallons of wine were manufactured, and there was not more than half a crop obtained in that season. The average yield of wine per acre, for five years in succession, is stated to be from 450 to 500 gallons per annum.

Many think the culture of the grape will be the finishing stroke to the temperance enterprise; affording a wholesome beverage from our hills in place of “corn juice” from our bottoms, and beer from our hop and barley fields.

The arguments urged by some with great sincerity, are the often-quoted facts, that the inhabitants of wine-making countries are favorably distinguished for temperance; and that a palatable and wholesome beverage—pure wine—would supersede the use of violent liquors. If we thought that our people would become temperate upon such conditions, we should be glad to see a vineyard on every hillside, and a wine-vat to every farmhouse. But there is no reason to expect any such result. Vineyards in Europe exist among a quiet, comparatively unenterprising peasantry. They have been _trained_ to moderation; necessity has made them temperate in all things—in food, in dress, in expense, and in drink. The popular habits are not so excitable as with us; business runs in quiet streams, and politics are unknown. With us, business is boisterous, pleasure obstreperous, and politics outrageous. Our people are anything but quiet; they are hot, hot in tongue and blood. It is wide enough of the mark to suppose that the same cause existing among two entirely dissimilar people, would, of course, produce the same results. We might as well say that vineyards would make our people eat less meat, less corn and pork, because the residents of wine districts were known to be addicted to a vegetable diet. The probable consequences of abundant cheap wine must be judged, not by what would happen in France, among abstemious peasants, nor on the Rhine, among economical and sober Germans; but by the tastes, habits, and tendencies of our own people. In this land everything tends to excitement. Men live upon a higher key, and live faster and live much more full of exhilaration than the same classes do in foreign lands. Our people drink not for the _taste_ but for the _excitement_ of liquor; and, so that wine, beer, or whisky will bring them up to the right key, the question of wholesomeness is quite unimportant. Our people are free and therefore have a right to live in the violation of natural laws; and a right, constantly exercised, of having fevers on account of surfeitings, and of dying early and by thousands by reasons of gross excesses.

Pleasures and business are esteemed by the volume of blood which they can drive, the pulse they can raise, the heat of excitement which they can produce. So long as affairs are fresh and piquant they are stimulants enough. But in the inequalities and intervals and fatigues of life, something else is required to hold the spirits up to the high level upon which everything proceeds. As soon as a man resorts to alcoholic stimulants to do this, he has embarked upon a course where all experience shows that he will drink deeper and deeper to final downright intemperance.

Some people think that cheap and wholesome beverage for the “masses,” for laboring people, is desirable. While it may be well enough for every gentleman of leisure, it is to be the poor man’s special blessing, saving him from the swill of the brewery and the fire of the still. Facts will stand on the side of the reverse reasoning. If wine is to be harmless at all, it will be with men who are not prone to enterprising heats; but given to the relishful pleasure of sipping just for the delicate flavors, for the aroma, for the fine _bouquet_ of wine—men who need to have their blood up, and kept up, and resort to wine to supply the flagging stimulus of affairs; such men will not drink for the flavor, but for the feeling.

It is for the sake of being roused; it is to be stimulated; it is, in plain language, to have the first exhilarations of drunkenness that laboring men drink, will drink, and have always drank cider, beer, wine, and brandy. The result of affording wine in abundance to such people as ours, will be to prepare them for a stronger drink just as soon as wine, by frequent use, is no longer stimulating enough. Wine will play jackal to brandy for the rich, and to whisky for the poor. We have some facts on hand touching this popular wine-drinking, which, if necessary, we shall employ at another time. Meanwhile, we are glad to see grape-culture spreading for the production of table-grapes; for the manufacture of wine, in so far as a supply of pure wine is needed for medicinal purposes. Further than that, we are opposed to wine-making. And as to cheating whisky out of its authority over “the dear people” by the blandishments of hock and champagne, or redeeming our barley and cornfields from the abominable persecutions of the brew-tub and the still, by the conservative energy or evangelizations of grape juice, we shall believe it when we see it; and we shall just as soon expect to see fire putting out fire and frost melting ice, as one degree of alcoholic stimulus curing a higher one.

* * * * *

TO PRESERVE GARDEN STICKS.—It is desirable when one has prepared good sticks for supporting carnations, roses, dahlias, etc., to preserve them from year to year. The following preparation will make them last a man’s lifetime: When they are freshly made, allow them to become thoroughly dry; then soak them in linseed oil for some time, say two or three days. When taken out let them stand to dry till the oil is perfectly soaked in; then paint with two coats of verdigris paint. No wet can then penetrate.

CARE OF ANIMALS IN WINTER.

The wisest man has said that “the righteous man regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” If any one is at a loss to know the meaning of the latter part, he cannot have made good use of his eyes. Lean cattle, leaner horses, anatomical specimens of cows, half fed, dirty, drenched by every rain, and pierced by every-winter wind, these are an excellent comment on the passage.

It is time for every merciful man to make provision for every dumb animal which is dependent upon him.

_Cows_ should be provided with a comfortable stable at night. No feeding will be a substitute for good shelter. Both the quantity and quality of the milk will depend upon bodily comfort in respect to warmth and nutritious food. Such as are becoming heavy with calf should be specially cared for. Many farmers let their cows shift for themselves as soon as their milk dries away. But the health of the coming calf and the ability of the cow to supply it, and her owner, copiously with milk depend on the condition in which she is kept during the period of gestation.

_Cattle_ should have a good shed provided for them, under which they may be dry and sheltered from winds. It is the curse of western farming that cattle and fodder are so plenty that it is hardly a loss to waste both.

Where the amount of stock is too great for comfortable home-quarters, and they are wintered in a stock field, there should be places of resort for them, so high as to remain dry, well turfed with blue-grass, and sheltered with cheap sheds, or by belts of forest.

_Sheep_ should receive special attention. They abhor wet. They should be permitted to keep their fleece dry, and to eat their food in a dry stable. The flock should be sorted. The bucks and wethers by themselves, the ewes by themselves; lambs and weak sheep in another division; and a fourth compartment should never be wanting for the sick, where they may be nursed and medically treated.

_Horses_ are more apt to be taken care of than cattle. But even they are often more indebted for existence to a stubborn tenacity of life, than to the care of their keepers. The horse is a more dainty feeder than ruminating animals. He should be supplied with a better article of hay: his grain should never be dirty or musty.

Hardy farm-horses may even rough out the winter without blanketing or any other care than is necessary to supply good food and enough of it. But carriage horses, and those highly prized for the saddle—aristocratic horses—should be more carefully groomed. It is not wise to blanket a horse at all, unless it can be _always_ done. If he is liable to change hands; to be off on journeys under circumstances in which he cannot be blanketed at night, it will be better not to begin it.

Winter is a good time to kill off spirited horses. They are easily run down by a smashing sleigh-ride pace. Boys and girls, buzzing in a double sleigh like a hive of bees, think that the horses enjoy themselves, at the exhilarating pace of six or eight miles an hour, as much as _they_ do. But this is not ordinarily the worst of it. The horse stands out, after a trip of ten or fifteen miles, at a post for an hour or two until thoroughly chilled; then home he races, and goes into the stable, steaming with sweat, to stand without blankets all night. Horses catch cold as much as men do. And a horse-cold is just as bad as a human cold. As there has been some difficulty, in the construction of fanning mills, to gain a strong enough current of wind, we would advise the builders of them to study the construction of a good stable.

WINTER NIGHTS FOR READING.

As the winter is a season of comparative leisure, it is the time for farmers to study. It is a good time for them to make themselves acquainted with the nature of soils, of manures, of vegetable organization—or structural botany. Farmers are liable to rely wholly upon their own experience, and to despise science. Book-men are apt to rely on scientific theories, and nothing upon practice. If these two tendencies would only court and marry each other, what a hopeful family would they rear! How nice it would look to see in the papers:

MARRIED.—By Philosophical Wisdom, Esq., Mr. Practical Experience, to Miss Sober Science. [We will stand godfather to all the children.]

FEATHERS.

The quality of feathers depends on their strength, elasticity and cleanness; and these, again, depend upon the condition of the bird, its health, food, and the time of plucking its feathers. _Down_ is the term applied to under-feathers—most abundant in water fowl, and in those especially which live in cold latitudes, being designed to protect them from wet and cold. The eider-down, from the eider-duck, is of the most repute. It is brought from extreme northern latitudes, and is used for coverings to beds, rather than for beds themselves, as, by being slept upon, it loses its elasticity.

_Poultry feathers_, as those of turkeys, ducks, and chickens, if assorted and the coarse ones rejected, afford very good beds; but they are not so elastic as geese-feathers.

Everybody knows that live geese-feathers are _the_ best. Every one does not think of the reason; which, as it is the key to the art of having good feathers, we shall propound.

So long as a bird is alive, the feathers are as much an object of nutrition as the flesh, the bones, or any other part of the body.

When dead, put them into hot water to make the feathers come easy. In pulling, take out large handfuls at a time, so as to have scraps of meat and shreds of skin adhere to the quill; let them lie for several days in wet heaps to ferment a little. Then dry them suddenly by violent heat, cram them into the bed-tick, and jump on, and if you have not an odorous bed, and, in a month or two, a bedful of visitors seeking food, then there is no truth in the laws of nature.

_The care of beds_ is not understood, often, by even good housewives. When a bed is freshly made it often smells strong. Constant airing, will, if the feathers are good, and only new, remove the scent.

A bed in constant use should be invariably beaten and shaken up daily, to enable the feathers to retain their elasticity.

It should lie after it is shaken up, for two or three hours a day, in a well ventilated room. The human body is constantly giving off a perspiration; and at night more than usual, from the relaxed condition of the skin. The bed will become foul from this cause if not well aired. If the bed is in a room which cannot be spared for such a length of time, it should be put out to air two full days in the week.

In airing beds, _the sun should never shine directly upon them_. It is _air_, not _heat_, that they need. We have seen beds lying on a roof where the direct and reflected rays of the sun had full power, and the feathers, without doubt, were _stewing_, and the oil in the quill becoming rancid; so that the bed smells worse after its roasting than before. _Always air beds in the shade, and, if possible, in cool and windy days._ And now, if any of our attentive housewife-readers, and we have not a few, are disposed to reward us for all this advice, let them give us a bed to sleep on, when we next visit them, made of growing feathers, from live and healthy geese, carefully picked, well cured, daily shaken up and thoroughly aired; and if we do not dream that the owner is an angel, it will be because we are too much occupied in sound sleeping.

NAIL UP YOUR BUGS.

“The words of the wise are as goads and as nails fastened by masters of assemblies.”—SOLOMON.

After a great pother about canker worms, peach-tree worms, and other audacious robber-worms; after smoke, salt, tar, and tansy, bands of wool, cups of oil, lime, ashes, and surgery have been set forth as remedies, to the confusion of those who have tried them bootlessly, it now appears that we are about to _nail_ the rascals. The Boston _Cultivator_, contains an article “On Destroying Insects on Trees,” from which we quote:

“I did not intend to give it publicity until I had fully tested it, but as the ravages are very extensive in the West, I cannot delay giving you the experiment, hoping that some of your western readers may now give it a fair trial and report the result. I will give one case which may induce the experiment wherever the evil is felt. In conversation with a friend in Newburyport, Dr. Watson, last fall. I mentioned the experiment; he invited me to his garden, where last year a fruit-tree was infested with the nests of caterpillar or canker-worms, as were his neighbors’ trees; he showed me a board nailed for convenience of a clothes-line upon one of the large limbs of the tree; he said he noticed a little while afterward that the nests on that limb dried up, and the worms disappeared, though the cause did not then occur to him though apparent as it will be to any scientific mind.

“Drive carefully well home, so that the bark will heal over a few headless cast iron nails, say some six or eight, size and number according to the size of the tree, in a ring around its body, a foot or two above the ground. The oxidation of the iron by the sap, will evolve ammonia, which will, of course, with the rising sap, impregnate every part of the foliage, and prove to the delicate palate of the patient, a nostrum, which will soon become, as in many cases of larger animals, the real panacea for the ills of life, _via Tomb_. I think if the ladies should drive some small iron brads into some limbs of any plant infested with any insect, they would find it a good and safe remedy, and I imagine in any case, instead of injury, the ammonia will be found particularly invigorating. Let it be tried upon a limb of any tree, where there is a vigorous nest of caterpillars, and watch it for a week or ten days, and I think the result will pay for the nails.”

Let our farmers take their hammers and nails and start for the orchard; if they see a bug on the tree, drive a nail, and he is a bug no more! If they see a worm, in with a nail, and the “ammonia evolved” will finish his functions!

The _Southern Planter_ is out with a backer to the Boston _Cultivator_:

“A singular fact, and one worthy of being recorded, was mentioned to us a few days since by Mr. Alexander Duke, of Albemarle. He stated that whilst on a visit to a neighbor, his attention was called to a large peach orchard, every tree in which had been totally destroyed by the ravages of the worm, with the exception of three, and these three were probably the most thrifty and flourishing peach-trees he ever saw. The only cause of their superiority known to his host, was an experiment made in consequence of observing that those parts of worm-eaten timber into which nails had been driven, were generally sound; when his trees were about a year old he had selected three of them and driven a tenpenny nail through the body, as near the ground as possible; whilst the balance of his orchard has gradually failed, and finally yielded entirely to the ravages of the worms, these three trees, selected at random, treated precisely in the same manner, with the exception of the nailing, had always been vigorous and healthy, furnishing him at that very period with the greatest profusion of the most luscious fruit. It is supposed that the salts of iron afforded by the nail are offensive to the worm, whilst they are harmless, or perhaps even beneficial to the tree.”

We do not wish to interrupt any experiments which the enterprising may choose to make. To be sure we regard the facts with some incredulity, and the chemical explanations with something of the mirthful superadded to unbelief. But if nails _are_ an antidote to worms—a real vermifuge—let them be administered, whatever may be the explanations; whether they are an electric battery, giving the insects a little domestic, vegetable lightning, or whether they afford “salts of iron” to physic them, or “evolve ammonia” in such potent, pungent strength that vermicular nostrils are unable to endure it!