s on the ground. The first, or south room,
ten feet by eighteen, was fitted for storing fruit, and afforded a
stairway to the rooms above, which were four in number besides the bath.
The larger room was of course the butter factory, and was equipped with
up-to-date appliances,--aerator, Pasteurizer, cooler, separator, Babcock
tester, swing churn, butter-worker, and so on. The house was to have
steep gables and projecting eaves, with a window in each gable, and two
dormer windows in each roof. The walls were to be plastered, and the
ground floor was to be cement. It cost $1375.

As motive power for the churn and separator, a two-sheep-power treadmill
has proved entirely satisfactory. It is worked by two sturdy wethers who
are harbored in a pleasant house and run, close to the power-house, and
who pay for their food by the sweat of their brows and the wool from
their backs. They do not appear to dislike the "demnition grind," which
lasts but an hour twice a day; they go without reluctance to the tramp
that leads nowhere, and the futile journey which would seem foolish to
anything wiser than a sheep. This sheep-power is one of the curios of
the place. My grand-girls never lose their interest in it, and it has
been photographed and sketched more times than there are fingers and
toes on the sheep.

The expenditure for equipment, from separator to sheep, was $354. I
made an arrangement with a fancy grocer in the city to furnish him
thirty pounds, more or less, of fresh (unsalted) butter, six days in the
week, at thirty-three cents a pound, I to pay express charges. I bought
six butter-carriers with ice compartments for $3.75 each, $23 in all,
and arranged with the express company to deliver my packages to the
grocer for thirty cents each. The butter netted me thirty-two cents a
pound that year, or about $60 a week.

In July I bought four thoroughbred Holsteins, four years old, in fresh
milk, and in October, six more, at an average price of $120 a
head,--$1200 in all. These reenforcements made it possible for me to
keep my contract with the middleman, and often to exceed it.

The dairy industry was now fairly launched and in working order. It had
cost, not to be exact, $7000, and it was reasonably sure to bring back
to the farm about $60 a week in cash, besides furnishing butter for the
family and an immense amount of skim-milk and butter-milk to feed to the
young animals on the place.

CHAPTER XXVI

LITTLE PIGS