Milk and butter on the farm

In the early 1950s, when I was little, we used to go down two or three miles east of Mom and Dad's place to visit Lester Summers. He had a windmill out by the corral that pumped water when the wind blew. The water first went through the wall of a little building into a small metal horse tank inside of it. When the tank was full enough, a pipe returned the water back outside into a bigger tank.

The water in that little tank was always clean and cool, so we'd go in the old building and get a drink. Usually there was a dipper hanging by the tank. But there was usually a bucket or jar of milk sitting in the tank. The cool water kept the milk from spoiling. We called it the milk house. You could put anything in that cool water and it would stay cool.

Many had a separator in the milk house. It would separate the fresh cow's milk into milk and cream. One could also, if you wanted, cool the fresh milk down, and the cream would come to the top. The bottom of the jar would be milk and at the top would be cream. A separator spun the milk, so the heavier milk would be separated from the lighter cream. Both were stored in the tank in the milk house to keep them cool.

In the early 1950s, when we went down in the cellar at Mom and Dad's house, there was an old-looking box at the far end against the wall. Mom and Dad called it the ice box, which it used to be. Before the invention of refrigerators, people placed a block of ice in an ice box to keep food cool for storage. It was kind of like a modern-day cooler, if you will, only a lot nicer. I remember my grandparents having an ice box in their kitchen. So from the time I could walk, I associated a cold place to store milk and butter (home-churned, real butter) and such things as being in an ice box or a milk house like Lester had.

To this day, I call a refrigerator an ice box. Our boys are used to Marge and I calling it an ice box. I'm not sure what our boys call it; I never paid attention. But two of my favorite items in that old ice box was real butter and real milk.

When Dad ran the fresh cow's milk through the separator, out would come pure cream and skim milk. My brother Mick and I drank skim milk, which is what we preferred. If we didn't want skim milk, Mom cooled down the fresh milk and skimmed off the cream. It wasn't skim milk, and it wasn't cream-loaded whole milk. We couldn't drink whole milk; it had so much cream in the milk it was almost thick tasting. Sometimes we'd stir in some chocolate and have chocolate milk.

Mom whipped some of the cream into whipped cream, which we used as topping. The only difference is her whipped cream had nothing in it except cream. We used to take some home-canned peaches, top them with broken soda crackers and then top with whipped cream. It was awesome. I wonder if it would taste as good today as it did back then?

Mom then would take some of the cream and churn it in a gallon jar with a paddle gadget. One would churn and churn, and eventually the whole cream would turn into butter. It was kind of a thick, yellow mound of cream, and along with the butter was a bunch of buttermilk.

My grandma use to make homemade bread, and when it came out of the oven we sliced off a piece and added real butter. That gets my taste buds running even today. Real butter was good on bread, pancakes, potatoes and all kinds of things. Sometimes we had chives growing, so we'd trim off some chives and add with the butter. The one thing about real butter, when it was cold, it was hard -- real hard. One couldn't spread it. One can spread the imitators, but the real deal is hard when cold.

Dad would take the buttermilk and drink it. I couldn't do that; it just didn't taste good. But Mom could use the buttermilk to cook, and it was impressive. Marge and I have bought buttermilk to use now and then, and the results have been good. I know buttermilk pancakes are always good. But back then, Mom had real buttermilk, real eggs from our chickens, and probably some bacon grease to add to the pancake mix. Most likely she used either bacon grease or lard on the griddle to cook the pancakes.

A few things back then did cause problems. Sometimes the milk would taste like horse weeds or soap weeds, so we knew what the milk cows had been eating. I always hated having to leave our favorite fishing hole early because we had to milk the cows when we got home. We always had to get up early all year long before we faced the daily tasks like school or work.

I miss those days, but at the same time I don't. They were good days that turned children into responsible adults. Most of the people from those generations are about gone, and most in this modern generation don't have a clue what growing up close to the earth really means.

If I could offer advice to those too young to remember the days, I'd find an old-timer and spend as much time with them as possible. You might be surprised how much they really do know.