A friend once told me she reared a brood of seventeen chickens, which were hatched the last week in September; they were placed in an empty greenhouse, and were consequently kept warm and dry. March is the month for poultry; the hatches are better, and they grow much more rapidly than at any other time.
I am quite sure that a poultry-yard may be made very profitable to any one who will bestow a little trouble on it. Great care must be taken with the young chickens at night; the hen should be securely cooped with them: for want of this precaution we in one night lost eight, when they were a few days old, being, as we supposed, carried off by the cats.
The best food for ducks when first hatched is bread and milk; in a few days barley-meal, wetted with water into balls about as big as peas, should be given to them. It is usual, as soon as both ducks and chickens come out of the shell, to put a pepper-corn down their throats. I don’t know that it is really of service to them, but it is a time-honored custom, and so perhaps it is as well to follow it.
As for our butter-making, it continued to prosper; we had some little trouble with it in the spring, when the weather set in suddenly very hot. It was certainly much more difficult to reduce the temperature of the cream to 55’ than it was to raise it to that degree.
I often thought with vain longing of the shop in the Strand, where we used to purchase Wenham Lake Ice: how firm would the butter have come, could we have had a few lumps to put in the churn half and hour before we required to use it!
Farmers’ wives tell us, that to get firm butter in very hot weather they get up at three o’clock in the morning, in order that it may be made before the sun becomes powerful. Now this is a thing that would not have suited H. or myself at all, and therefore we never mustered up courage to attempt it.
One day in March—and this is the last disaster I have to record concerning our butter—we were particularly anxious to have it good, as we expected visitors, to whom we had frequently boasted of our skill as dairywomen: the day was very warm, and the cream appeared much thicker than usual; we churned for more than an hour without its appearing to undergo any change; we frequently removed the lid to see if there was any sign of butter coming, but each time we were disheartened when we discovered it looked just the same as when placed in the churn. At last the handle went round as easily as if no cream were in it, and presently it began to run over the top of the churn. When we looked in a curious sight presented itself: the cream had risen to the top, just as milk does when it boils! We were greatly astonished. In nine months’ butter-making we had seen nothing like it.
Tom, who milked the cows was supposed to know something of the art of churning; he was, therefore, called into the dairy: as soon as he saw the state of the matter he exclaimed, “Why, the cream’s gone to sleep!”