“If cheese is out of the question, how about butter, eggs, and fowls?”
As soon as this is mentioned, we all see how reasonable it is. There is, almost all over the kingdom, a strong and unfailing demand for these commodities, as is shown by the prodigious importation of each and all of them. The enterprise may be carried a long way on a small capital, and admits of being taken up in almost any proportion. So little training is required, that it may be almost said that observation and good sense will do as well as any apprenticeship.
In the neighbourhood of any large town it answers to make butter,—butter which is regularly good in quality,—for sale in larger or smaller quantities. Good butter is eagerly bought everywhere by town and village populations; and what room there is in this country for an increase of the product is shown by the amount of importation. Last year we imported little short of a million cwts. If we dwell for a moment on the idea of a million cwts. of butter, we shall be surprised that our green pastures, and our large areas of green crops, should not have spared us the necessity of going to the continent for butter which we might have expected to get, fresh and sweet, at home. It so happens, however, that while we are raising perpetually less wheat and more cattle, the demand for dairy products grows in greater proportion; so that there is an opening for more industry in the dairy department than seems ready to flow into it. It appears to me that this is a direction in which young women may reasonably hope to find a creditable career.
In the markets of our chief towns it is a common thing to see a stall open every market-day for the sale of butter and other products from the dairy of the nobleman or other country-gentleman who may have an estate near: and nobody thinks this odd, or in any way objectionable,—any more than the sale of coal from the collieries of Lady Londonderry or Lord Durham. Something depends on the way in which the business is managed. I remember how a nobleman got quizzed, a good many years ago, about his particular vanity,—his butter; but the fun arose out of his failure. He told all his acquaintance what butter he was going to favour the market with, at twopence per pound dearer than the market price. People would be eager to pay the price for his butter, which would be something quite different from anything they had ever tasted before. He had a paragon of a dairy-woman: he had ordered stamps with his coronet on them: and his stall would be in a conspicuous place in the market.
On the first day, sure enough, every pound was sold immediately; but before the day was over several friends had told him that there must be some mistake, for the butter stamped with his coronet was not good. It was difficult to convince him of this: but in a little while he announced that the fault had been in the dairy-woman; that he had obtained another, from a remote county, at high wages, with a capital character. The twopence per pound would be all wanted for the expense of the new plan; but there could be no disappointment again. Here he was mistaken: the second supply of butter—folded in natty cloths, and duly coroneted, and sold by a condescending lady in an elegant morning dress—was more nauseous than the first. The same thing happened a third time, when, if I remember right, his lordship forbade his market-woman to bring back any butter. She was to get rid of it somehow; and it was sold for cart-grease. The belief of the neighbourhood was, that the fault lay in the pasture: and everybody was quite ready to buy and approve if the butter had been good, and sold at market-price.
Such failures are quite unnecessary; and there is nothing in the task of producing good butter which any young woman of sense, adroitness, and activity is not equal to. And what a thoroughly suitable occupation it is! If she can command the little capital requisite to stock a few acres of land, and set up a dairy, and has acquired the art of managing cows and making butter, she will find a good business ready to her hand in all the populous districts of the country. If she has not the means of setting up for herself, she may perhaps make a partnership with some of the twenty thousand Englishwomen who follow agricultural pursuits; or she may find a place in the household of some one of the half-million of farmers’ wives and daughters who attend to the dairy and poultry departments of the farm. By means of such a share she may obtain money enough to set up as the tenant of a few acres of land, and the owner of cows in proportion. She must have learned how to manage pasture-land, and how to grow roots; and she must be a good judge of cows, as well as a good maker of butter.
These conditions being fulfilled, it may be almost said to be impossible that she should fail of a comfortable independence. She will, if she deserves it, assuredly obtain her share of the national custom which now goes so needlessly to Holland and other foreign countries.
It is only quite lately that this common branch of production has been made as profitable as a little study and attention can make it. Even lately I have been surprised at the absurd diversities of practice which I have found within even a narrow range of pastoral country. Among a score of farms one may find half-a-dozen different and very positive judgments about the best sort of pans for milk—wood, lead, earthenware, or glass; and about how much temperature has to do with the yield of cream and of butter; and about the washing and the salting of the butter; and, in fact, about almost every part of the manufacture. I understand that between one method and another, in regard to milk-pans and the temperature of their contents, there is a difference of no less than one-third in the yield of cream, while a difference of one-fifth or one-sixth is very common. Now, here is where a woman of education is sure to have the advantage over ignorant or old-fashioned farmers’ wives and daughters, who have no notion that the arts of the dairy did not reach their limit a thousand years ago. An intelligent woman who loves the country, loves cows, loves household work, so as to enjoy giving her mind to doing her business in the best possible