The Vermont Watchman

Separators on the Farm.

MR. John Gould.-Dear Sir:-Please tell us in the Country Gentleman about the value of farm separators by kindly answering the following questions:

1. Is the farm separator a success in its place?

2. What is its place?

3. What are the advantages in its use?

4. What objectionable features are there in its use?

5. Do you know of any places, localities or individuals that have discarded their use.

6. If so, for what reasons?

Any information you can give us on that subject will be greatly appreciated.

J.M. H.

Nashua, Iowa.

ANSWER BY MR. GOULD.

1. It is generally believed that the farm separator has already in its history, passed the experimental and argumentative stage, and been adopted in principle-as the most perfect answer to the question, "How shall the cream of the dairy farm be secured?" There is no doubt of its success. The only point of serious import is this: Where a man has good facilities for raising cream by cold, deep setting and the dairy herd is small, the item of first cost of equipment may play some part in the matter, and it may be argued that a little loss may be profitably incurred in creaming by gravity, as compared with the $100 outlay of the separator. In the hands of many, and everything favorable, deep, cold setting has closely approached the work of the separator in thoroughness but in nine other cases, the results were below comparison. True, poor work can be done with a separator, but less probably, as the milk in the farm dairy will be separated fresh from the cow, and is as a rule about in perfect condition as carried from the stable and put into the separator tank, and so needs no preparation to be in the right condition. If the speed of the machine is maintained, and the adjustments are all right, the creaming of milk need not be wasteful, and the milk will show but the slightest trace of fat.

2. I believe that the separator has its place in every well-regulated farm dairy house. The fault with the greater part of the farm butter is a result of delay and faulty creaming of the milk, and as the cream of fresh milk as it comes from the separator is almost faultless, it needs no argument to prove that any device which will deliver pure, faultless cream to the maker, has half solved the question of how to attain to fine farm butter.

3. Dispatch is one of the prime advantages of using the separator. The good milk is, without being contaminated in any way, creamed in its best estate, and gives a correspondingly fine cream. The old objection was that separator cream did not give a fine grain and flavor to the resulting butter as gravity-raised cream, but this is now answered by inventive genius, which has discovered that the two creams in question have different "constitutions" and need churning differently, and the cream to be cared for on a different plan. Separator cream needs "ripening," and the starter answers this objection, and churning at a much lower temperature gives the desired grain. Cream raised by old methods became thoroughly inoculated by the germs and bacteria of acidity, while the separator cream was not subjected. The use of fresh, sour milk to the separator cream promotes the sort and form of ferment needed, and lower temperature when churning is in harmony with the object sought. As well argue that good bread can be made every time by exposing the dough to the air as can be secured by the using of yeast, which is only a bread starter after all.

4. The objectionable features to its use are, the work of turning the crank and sticking to it from forty minutes to an hour, and so relieving the good wife of all the trouble of washing pans, cans and milk things generally. The cost has been somewhat against their use, but so good an authority as Mr. C. P. Goodrich of Wisconsin estimates that taking everything into consideration, a separator will pay for itself in one season where twenty cows are kept. If one has a cheap power of some kind, a colt, heifer or the bull may, with a suitable governor to the machine, supply the "motive" for running the separator, and the real objection immediately disappears. Now that the separator has been greatly simplified, its cost reduced to a fair price, and the character of its cream studied into and how to handle it made more clear, I do not think that there is any valid objection that can be made to stand, though of course men will assert and argue to the contrary, as some will against all progress and improvement.

5. I do not know of any man who has given the separator a trial who has not been convinced that it was a great success. I know of separators that are not used all the time, as here in this locality city milk, and even creamery prices, seem to warrant selling milk in preference to butter making at certain seasons of the year, and the machines lie idle. The great separators in a creamery near me are standing still for the reason that there is more money in city milk just now than in butter; but the owner is a strong separator man. That separators are continually being purchased, and all criticism of separator butter has vanished, is good proof of the value of the separators on the farms, and their general popularity.

6. I have no material out of which an answer in the nature of objections to the separator on the farm can be constructed.-Country Gentleman.