The Albemarle Press, Thursday, August 10, 1922
A Creamery for
Stanly…What It Is and What It May Mean to Farmers of the County
For the past several months, the question of getting ready
for and the establishment of a creamery for Stanly County has been kept before
the people in some shape or form.
The matter assumed some shape at the banquet given by the
farmers of the county, when a number of business and professional men were
invited to participate therein. We published the names of the creamery
committee in our past issue, and these men will very soon make a report of
their investigations.
Some have only a vague idea as to just what a creamery is
and what it means to the county. It is a co-operative in the sense that a
number of farmers or farmers and business men join together and form a
co-partnership, corporation, or become joint stockholders in the enterprise. In
its organization, it resembles any other business venture, and stock
certificates are issued according to the amount invested by each participant.
To establish a creamer for the making of butter alone, would
perhaps cost in equipment alone around six or eight thousand dollars. If ice
cream should be one of the objects or products, then additional machinery and
equipment would be required, and the sum total would about double this
estimated amount.
In addition to cream, butter, and ice cream, it is easily
seen that a poultry business could be added to the other, and the sale of
chickens and eggs would increase the revenue to be derived therefrom.
In its practical working, in order to make it a success,
some 300 cows are first necessary. These may be owned by farmers in every
section of the county, and will be. Milk routes will be formed, and the
creamery will send a collector out once or twice each week. The cream has been
separated by the farmer from the milk, and the collector has a means for
determining the strength of the cream, or the percentage of butter fat therein.
A ticket or memoranda is made thereof, and notation of the amount of cream so
furnished by each farmer, and settlement is made in cash or otherwise at stated
intervals.
With weekly or semi-weekly collections of cream from 300 cows,
the whole goes into bulk and is manufactured into butter at the creamery, or
into both butter and ice cream, as the case may be, and the creamery itself
markets this product.
To make it a success, there must be good business
management, and like any other business the success will depend upon the
activities of the management and the quality of the product. For the first year
or perhaps two, the investment might not yield a dividend, and if one at all
only a small one, for the reason that a new concern does not have the advantage
of one already established.
But it is easily seen that it provides regular sales of
cream from the cows owned by a hundred or more farmers. It likewise means that
Stanly County will place her imprint on the quality of butter made, and that
this should find ready sales at home and elsewhere. Its possibilities will
expand each year as the business grows, and we know of no effort farmers can
make which would mean more in a business way for the general welfare of the
county than by the establishment of a creamery.
