will not rise.] It should be at once strained into the milk-pans, and
not disturbed for forty-eight hours in winter, and twenty-four in
summer. In hot weather it is highly important that the cream should be
perfectly strained from the milk, or it will make it very rank. Half a
dozen moderate-sized lumps of sugar to every two quarts of cream tend
to keep it sweet. In summer always churn twice a week. Some persons
imagine that cream cannot be "too sweet," but that is a mistake; it
must have a certain degree of acidity, or it will not produce butter,
and if put into the churn without it, must be beaten with the paddles
till it acquires it. The cream should, in the summer, be shifted each
morning into a clean crock, that has first been well scalded and then
soaked in cold water; and the same rule applies to all the utensils
used in a dairy. The best things to scrub the churn and all wooden
articles with, are wood ashes and plenty of soap.

In some parts of the country, the butter made by the farmers' wives
for sale is not washed at all; they say, "It washes all the taste
away." They remove it from the churn, and then taking it in their
hands, dash it repeatedly on the board; that is what they call
"smiting" it. The butter so made is always strong, and of two colors,
as a portion of the buttermilk remains in it: if any of it were put
into a cup, and that placed in hot water, for the purpose clarifying,
there would, when it was melted, be found a large deposit of
buttermilk at the bottom of the cup. We have tried the butter made our
way, and there was scarcely any residuum.

Besides, this "smiting" is a most disgusting process to witness. In
warm weather the butter adheres to the hands of the "smiter," who
puffs and blows over it as if it were very hard work. Indeed, I once
heard a strong-looking girl; daughter of a small farmer in Kent, say