Page:The story of milk.djvu/143

 beginning to expel the whey, crossways, into vertical sticks, two inches square.

Scoop

Cheese sword

Cutting the curd with the scoop

Tools for stirring the curd

No horizontal knife is used, but a few minutes after the last vertical cutting the curd is further broken by the "scoop," a wooden spoon or ladle about eight inches long, thirteen inches wide, one and one-half inches deep, and provided with a short handle. Standing at one side of the kettle, the cheesemaker scoops off a layer from the top and, drawing the scoop towards himself, drops the pieces of curd close to the side of the kettle. This movement is repeated, at first slowly, then faster, and soon the whole mass of curd is moving, the pieces cut off going down along the side of the kettle and the rest of the sticks sliding upward along the other side, to be attacked by the scoop as soon as