held over till November did not begin till the cows were turned out to
pasture in May. To have made forty tubs by that time and sold them for
eighteen or twenty cents a pound was considered very satisfactory. Then
to make forty or fifty firkins during the summer and fall and to get as
good a price for it made the farmer's heart glad. When Father first came
on the farm, in 1827, butter brought only twelve or fourteen cents per
pound, but the price steadily crept up till in my time it sold from
seventeen to eighteen and a half. The firkin butter was usually sold to
a local butter buyer named Dowie. He usually appeared in early fall,
always on horseback, having notified Father in advance. At the breakfast
table Father would say, "Dowie is coming to try the butter to-day."

"I hope he will not try that firkin I packed that hot week in July,"
Mother would say. But very likely that was the one among others he would
ask for. His long, half-round steel butter probe or tryer was thrust
down the centre of the firkin to the bottom, given a turn or two, and
withdrawn, its tapering cavity filled with a sample of every inch of
butter in the firkin. Dowie would pass it rapidly to and fro under his
nose, maybe sometimes tasting it, then push the tryer back into the
hole, then withdrawing it, leaving its core of butter where it found it.
If the butter suited him, and it rarely failed to do so, he would make
his offer and ride away to the next dairy.

The butter had always to be delivered at a date agreed upon, on the
Hudson River at Catskill. This usually took place in November. It was
the event of the fall: two loads of butter, of twenty or more firkins
each, to be transported fifty miles in a lumber wagon, each round trip
taking about four days. The firkins had to be headed up and gotten
ready. This job in my time usually fell to Hiram. He would begin the day
before Father was to start and have a load headed and placed in the