eastern counties of the State, the interest and
profit of the farm revolve about the cow. The dairy is the one great
matter,--for milk, when milk can be shipped to the New York market,
and for butter when it cannot. Great barns and stables and
milking-sheds, and immense meadows and cattle on a thousand hills,
are the prominent agricultural features of these sections of the
country. Good grass and good water are the two indispensables to
successful dairying. And the two generally go together. Where there
are plenty of copious cold springs, there is no dearth of grass.
When the cattle are compelled to browse upon weeds and various wild
growths, the milk and butter will betray it in the flavor. Tender,
juicy grass, the ruddy blossoming clover, or the fragrant,
well-cured hay, make the delicious milk and the sweet butter. Then
there is a charm about a natural pastoral country that belongs to no
other. Go through Orange County in May and see the vivid emerald of
the smooth fields and hills. It is a new experience of the beauty
and effectiveness of simple grass. And this grass has rare virtues,
too, and imparts a flavor to the milk and butter that has made them
famous.

Along all the sources of the Delaware the land flows with milk, if
not with honey. The grass is excellent, except in times of
protracted drought, and then the browsings in the beech and birch
woods are a good substitute. Butter is the staple product. Every
housewife is or wants to be a famous butter-maker, and Delaware
County butter rivals that of Orange in market. Delaware is a high,
cool grazing country. The farms lie tilted up against the sides of
the mountain or lapping over the hills, striped or checked with
stone walls, and presenting to the eye long stretches of pasture and
meadow land, alternating with plowed fields and patches of waving
grain. Few of their features are picturesque; they are bare, broad,
and simple. The farmhouse gets itself a coat of white paint, and
green blinds to the windows, and the barn and wagon-house a coat of
red paint with white trimmings, as soon as possible. A penstock
flows by the doorway, rows of tin pans sun themselves in the yard,
and the great wheel of the churning-machine flanks the milk-house,
or rattles behind it. The winters are severe, the snow deep. The
principal fuel is still wood,--beech, birch, and maple. It is hauled
off the mountain in great logs when the first November or December
snows come, and cut up a