Creamery To Help Stanly County Farmers, 1922

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.