Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1880 — The Way They Churn in Texas. [ARTICLE]

The Way They Churn in Texas.

I thought that I had seen a good many kinds of churns before I came down here (says a New England Yankee, writing from Texas) —crank churns, dasher churns, and “chemical churns.” But I will now describe a mode of churning butter that will, I think, make New England folks open their eyes. Commonly, they do not make much butter in this county, and the settlers here come to get along without it; but, by the time I had been at the poesta two or three days, I began to want some butter on my bread.

M had a herd of twenty-five or thirty cattle, which he kept for beef, and among them were a number of milch cows. Ed was bidden to set the milk for twenty-four hours, and the next morning M told Lizado, or “Liz,” as we called him, to churn. They had done such a thing as to churn butter before, it appears. Liz went out and brought a bag of raw hide, about as large as a common meal bag. How clean it was inside, I am sure I do not know, but he turned the cream into it, and poured in new milk enough to fill it two-thirds full, and then he tied it up with a strong strip of hide. M stood with a broad grin on his face. I was already too much astonished to make any remarks. Liz now carried the bag out of doors, and then got his horse. Taking his lassoo off the saddle, he made one end of it fast to the cream bag, the other end, as usual, being attached to a ring in the saddle. This done, he jumped on the horse and tucked spurs to him. Away he went, and at the first jerk that bag' went ten feet into the an-, and fell with a squach, close up to the horse’s heels. At the next jerk it went higher still. He soon went out of sight, with the, bag dancing after him. Sometimes it hit down alongside the horse, and sometimes it struck slap on the animal’s rump. M was convulsed with, laughter—at me, I suppose; sos I must confess that this upset all my previous ideas of butter-making. In the course of twenty or thirty minutes Liz came back, the horse looking pretty hot, and the bag very dusty. “Es mantica” (butter’s come), said he. Ed untied the churn, and, sure enough, there was a good homely chunk of butter in it; and it proved to be very decent butter, too. I asked if that was the way they always churned. They said it was, and Ed declared it was “ a dale asier than turnin’ a crank.” Sol respectfully submit the “method ” to all our good people up North. Everything needed for it is a sole-leather bag, a clothes-line and a horse.

May is a very busy month, and there is so much work crowded into it that a farmer is in danger of being in a hurry. Every hour of work should be so planned that it will tell most effectually, and this requires considerable thought in order to do the most urgent and important work first, and leave undone those things which may be done almost as well by-and-by. As we sow so do we reap, and, as this is th ' month of sow-

ing, the work now will in a great measure determine what the harvest of the year shall be. Keep pushing on, but with a plan.