THE CHESHIRE CHEESE DISTRICT AND ENGLISH HUSBANDRY UPON HEAVY
SOILS.—PASTURES.—THEIR PERMANENCE.—THE USE OF BONES AS A MANURE IN
CHESHIRE.—A VALUABLE REMARK TO OWNERS OF IMPROVED NEAT STOCK.—BREEDS
OF DAIRY STOCK.—HORSES.
[Sidenote: _SOIL AND CLIMATE IN CHEESE-MAKING._]
The soil of a considerable part of this county being a tenacious clay,
favourable to the growth of grasses, and difficult of tillage, its
inhabitants are naturally dairy-men, and it has been particularly
distinguished for many centuries for its manufacture of cheese. Its
distinction in this respect does not appear to be the result of
remarkable skill or peculiar dairy processes, but is probably due to
the particular varieties of herbage, to the natural productions of
which, the properties of its soil, and perhaps of its climate, are
peculiarly favourable.[18]
[18] The best cheese is made on cold, stiff, clay-soils (but not on the
purest clays), and from the most _natural_ herbage, even from _weedy_,
sterile pastures; but much the largest quantity is made from an equal
extent of more moderately tenacious and drained or permeable soils
spontaneously producing close, luxuriant, fine (not rank) grasses and
white clover.
The grounds for this conclusion are the general value placed by the
farmers upon their old pastures, where the natural assortment of
herbage may be considered to have entirely obtained and taken the place
of the limited number of varieties which are artificially sowed, the
fact that the butter of the district is not, as a general rule, highly
esteemed, and that I cannot learn that the process of cheese-making
differs any more from that of other districts in England or the United
States, than between different dairies producing cheese of equal value
in this district itself.
It is by no means to be inferred, however, that the quality of cheese
is not affected by the process of manufacture. There is no doubt that
the skill and nicety of a superior dairy-maid will produce cheese of
a superior quality on a farm of poor herbage, while an ignorant and
careless one will make only an inferior description, no matter what the
natural advantages may be. The best cheese made in the United States is
quite equal to the best I have tasted here, but the average quality is
by no means equal to the average quality of Cheshire cheese.
[Sidenote: _THE CHEESE-MAKING PROCESS._]
Superiority in the manufacture seems not to depend, however, upon
any describable peculiarities of the process, which differs in no
essential particular from that common in our dairies. Excellence is
well understood to depend greatly upon extreme cleanliness in all the
implements employed, and upon the purity and moderate temperature of
the atmosphere. Means to secure the latter are used much the same
as with us. Stoves and hot-water pipes are sometimes employed in
the cheese-room; and I may mention that where this is in a detached
building of one story, it is considered essential that it should have
a thatched roof. In some cases where the roof has been slated, it has
been found necessary in the warmest weather to remove the cheese to the
cellar of the farm-house. Plank shelves are more generally used, and
are esteemed better than stone.
Not only is there no uniformity in the methods of the different dairies
to distinguish them from those of the United States, but rarely in
any single dairy are there any exact rules with regard to the time to
be employed in any parts of the process, or as to the temperature or
the measure of any ingredients. Thus the degree of heat at setting the
milk, although the skill to _feel_ when it is right is deemed highly
important, is almost never measured, even in the best dairies. The
quantity of rennet is guessed at, and its strength not exactly known.
The quantity of salt used is undefined, and the time for _sweating_ or
curing of the cheese, when made, is left to be accidental.
With regard to some of these points, however, it has been found (as
reported to the Royal Agricultural Society) that in some of the best
dairies the milk, when judged to be of the right temperature for
coagulating, was by the thermometer at 82° F. (variations from 76° to
88°). From four to sixteen square inches of rennet skin in a pint of
water (generally four square inches) were used to make the cheese from
fifty gallons of milk, and 1 lb. to 1 lb. 4 ounces salt to the same
quantity. It is thought that the best cheese is made with less salt
than this. The heat of the milk-room was found to vary from 64° to 78°
in August, and it was thought desirable that it should be cooler than
this. The reporter thought that a temperature of 50° would be most
approved throughout the year. I never saw or heard of ice being used in
any way in a Cheshire dairy.
Some of the best dairy-maids claim to have _secrets_ by which they are
enabled to surpass others, but it is certain that they do not lessen
the necessity for extreme cleanliness, nicety, and close observation
and judgment, and that with this, in addition to what is everywhere
known and practised, there is no mystery necessary to produce the
best.[19]
[19] “A cheese dairy is a manufactory—a workshop—and is, in truth, a
place of hard work. That studied _outward neatness_ which is to be
seen in the show dairies of different districts may be in character
where butter is the only object, but would be superfluous in a cheese
dairy. If the room, the utensils, the dairy-woman and her assistants
be sufficiently _clean_ to give perfect sweetness to the produce,
no matter for the _colour_ or the _arrangement_. The scouring-wisp
gives an _outward fairness_, but is frequently an enemy to _real
cleanliness_.”—MARSHALL’S VALE OF GLOUCESTER. Besides the means of
securing this _inner_ cleanliness, sweetness, and purity, which must
be of the air too, as well as of the utensils, &c., it is probable
that the dairy-maids’ _secrets_ are in a knowledge of the best
_temperature_, particularly of that at which the milk should be curdled.
The Cheshire cheese in market always has an unnaturally deep, yellow
colour, though of late less so than formerly. It is given by the
addition of “colouring” to the milk immediately before the rennet steep
is applied. This “colouring” is manufactured and sold at the shops for
the purpose. It is an imitation of annatto, formed chiefly of a small
quantity of real annatto mixed with tumeric and soft soap. I think it
is never used in sufficient quantity to affect the flavour at all, but
I observe that the farmers and people in the country prefer cheese for
their own use that is not coloured.
[Sidenote: _MILKING.—PASTURES.—BONES._]
_Whey Butter._ It is common in Cheshire to make butter from the whey.
It will probably surprise many to learn that there is any cream left in
whey; but _there_ undoubtedly is, and _it_ may be extracted by the same
means as from milk. The only difference in the process is, that it is
_set_ in large tubs, instead of small pans, and that the whey is drawn
off by a faucet from the bottom after the cream has risen. If allowed
to remain too long it will give a disagreeable flavour to the cream.
One hundred gallons of milk will give ninety of whey, which will give
ten or twelve gallons of cream, which will make three or four pounds
of butter. So that besides the cheese, twenty to twenty-five pounds of
butter are made in a year from the milk of each cow, an item of some
value in a large dairy. The butter is of second-rate quality, but not
bad—worth perhaps three cents a pound less than milk butter.
The farms in the country over which we walked in Cheshire were
generally small, less, I should think, than one hundred acres.
Frequently the farmer’s family supplied all the labour upon
them,—himself and his sons in the field, and his wife and daughters in
the dairy,—except that in the harvest month one or two Irish reapers
would be employed. The cows, in the summer, are kept during the day
in distant pastures, and always at night in a home lot. During the
cheese-making season, which on these small farms is from the first of
May till November, they are driven home and fastened in _shippens_, or
sheds, between five and six o’clock, morning and night, and then milked
by the girls, sometimes assisted by the men. On a farm of one hundred
acres, fifteen to twenty cows are kept, and three persons are about
an hour in milking them. From twenty to thirty gallons of milk (say
six quarts from each cow) is expected to be obtained on an average,
and about one pound of dried cheese from a gallon of milk. From two to
five cwt. (of 112 lbs.) of cheese may be made from the milk of each cow
during the year. Three cwt. is thought a fair return on the best farms.
In a moderately dry and temperate summer, more cheese is made than in
one which is very wet.
The pastures are generally looked upon as permanent, the night pastures
are sometimes absolutely so, as it is supposed that they have not
generally been broken up for many hundred years. During the last ten
years the pasture lands have been very greatly, and, as they tell me,
almost incredibly improved by the use of bone dust. It is applied in
the quantity of from twenty to forty cwt. on an acre as top-dressing,
and I was told that pastures on which it had been applied at the rate
of a ton to an acre, eight or nine years ago, had continued as good (or
able on an average of the years to bear as many cows) as similar land
top-dressed with farm-yard dung every two years, probably at the rate
of thirty cubic yards to an acre. There seems to be no doubt at all
that land to which _inch_ bones were applied ten years ago are yet much
the better for it. They are usually applied in April, and the ground
is lightly pastured, or perhaps not at all until the following year.
The effect, the farmers say, is not merely to make the growth stronger,
but to make it sweeter; the cattle will even eat the weeds which before
they would not taste of. However, in poor land especially, it is
found to encourage the growth of the more valuable grasses more than
that of the weeds, so that the latter are crowded out, and a clean,
thick, close turf is formed. If the ground has been drained, all these
improvements are much accelerated and increased. Upon newly _laid down_
lands, however, the effect is not so great; it is especially on old
pastures (from which the extraction of the phosphates in the milk has
been going on for ages sometimes, uninterruptedly) that the improvement
is most magical. The productive value of such lands is very frequently
known to have been doubled by the first dressing of bones.
Both boiled and raw bones are used, and though there is a general
belief that the latter are more valuable, I do not hear of any
experience that has shown it; on the contrary, I am told of one field
which was dressed on different sides equally with each sort, and now,
several years after, no difference has been observed in their effect.
A comparison must, of course, be made by measure, as boiled bones are
generally bought wet, and overweigh equal bulks of raw about 25 per
cent. Dry bone-dust weighs from 45 to 50 lbs. to a bushel.
I have not heard of _super-phosphate of lime_, or bones dissolved in
sulphuric acid, being used as a top-dressing for pastures.
[Sidenote: _IMPROVED DAIRY STOCK._]
I quote the following from the journal of the Royal Agricultural
Society, as a mark of deep significance to American farmers, beyond
its proof of the value of bones:—“Before bones came into use in this
country, the farmers made a point of selecting a _hardy_ and _inferior_
description of stock for their clay lands, farmers finding that _large,
well-bred cows did not at all answer upon them_; but now they find”
(_in improved pasture_) “that the best of stock find ample support, not
only to supply the cheese-tub freely, but also to _do justice to their
lineage_, by retaining, if not improving, their size and symmetry, so
that the farmer has not only the advantage of making considerably more
cheese, but also of making more money by his turn of stock.”
I cannot now ascertain the amount of bones annually exported from the
United States to England, but it must be very great, as I know one
bone-miller, near New York, that has a standing order to ship all he
can furnish at a certain price, and who last year thus disposed of
80,000 bushels.
_Breeds of Dairy Stock._—I have already described most of the dairy
stock that we have observed along the road. We have seen scarcely any
pure bred stock of any kind. Ayrshire blood seems to predominate and
be most in favour on the best farms. The points of the short-horns
are also common, and in the south we saw some Herefords. The best
milkers seemed to be a mixed blood of Ayrshires and some other large
and long-horned cattle with a smaller red and black breed, probably
Welsh. I incline to think that experience has taught the dairy-men to
prefer half or quarter bred stock to full bloods of any breed. For
beef-making it is otherwise. I have seen no working oxen. Horses are
the only beasts of draught on the farms; they vary greatly in quality,
but are generally stout, heavy, hardy, and very powerful. On a farm of
one hundred acres, three will be kept, sometimes four, and at about
that rate on the larger farms, with an additional saddle-horse or two
for his own use, if the farmer can afford it. Farmers generally raise
their own cows, choosing heifer calves from their best milker for the
purpose. Cattle are not commonly reared for sale here. Few sheep are
raised, but many are brought lean from Wales and Ireland, and fatted
here.