Why Chap and Fielden Walked to Town

I'm not sure for what reason 

Grandma Cato would have had 

to send Chap and Uncle Fielden to town 

on that hot dusty summer day in 1922. 

But it must have been important 

because it was a long, hot, walk 

for two little short-legged boys. 

One thing is for sure. 

It must not have been for milk or butter.

Farm folk were self-sufficient in those days. 

Most country families would have had a cow.

Milking the cow was part of the daily work,

and I vividly remember getting up at dawn,

and going out to milk cows with my grandmother.

The family cow would have given more milk than they could drink. 

Part of that milk was used to make butter.

Do you know how butter is made?

Every housewife had this skill in those days.

Here is how it was done.

The milk was left in a cool place and cream was skimmed from the top of the milk until you had three or four gallons. Then it was poured into shallow pans called "setting pans" or bowls called "pancheons" and left to set or turn.  To let the cream set meant the cream would separate even further from the liquid.  

The setting dishes were often made of earthenware.

Metal pans weren't used 

because metal gave the butter a strange flavor. 

Some housewives liked to leave the cream to ferment just a bit to give it flavor.  Therefore the pancheon was only glazed on the inside so as to protect the milk, while the outside was left unglazed so the outside of the bowl would absorb cool water. You wanted the cream to ferment slowly, not to spoil. 

Pancheon or Setting Pan

A cream skimmer was used to lift off the cream. These were often saucer shaped with perforations to catch the cream while letting the milk drip back into the pan. Anything the right shape would work. These were also known as a fleeter or scummer. If there were large amounts of milk to skim, the fleeter might have a long handle, but more often, they just had a finger hold handle.

Scummer

Scummer with long handle.

Agitating the cream is what separates the butter from the liquid.  

After the cream was skimmed, 

it would have been put into the churn or a jar.  

I've made butter by shaking the buttermilk in a jar. 

But it's much easier if you have a churn.  

Churns came in different sizes and types.  

Originally, they were large containers that sat on the floor. 

They had a long stick called a dasher inside. 

The dasher might be perforated, 

or it might have a circle of wood or crossed boards at the bottom, 

but its purpose was to agitate the milk 

and cause the butter to clump together. 

The job had its own rhythm, 

and it took a while.

Butter churning songs were handed down 

from generation to generation 

and thought of as charms for making the butter "come."

* * *

 Come, Butter, Come!

Come, butter, come!

Come, butter, come!

Peter stands at the gate

Waiting for his butter cake,

Come, butter, COME!

Churning Song

 (as collected in Eastern Kentucky) 

Sung to the tune of “Farmer in the Dell” 

Churn churn churn, 

this is churning day, 

Til the golden butter comes 

the dasher must not stay. 

Pat pat pat, 

make it smooth and round, 

Now the golden butter’s done 

won’t you buy a pound. 

* * *

Once the butter had come, 

it was taken from the churn, 

"worked," and salted.  

Working meant the butter was squeezed and squeezed 

to get the last bit of liquid out. 

If you left liquid in the butter, it would spoil faster. 

Taking the liquid out

meant it could often be left on the kitchen counter for days 

with no worries of spoilage, 

except in the hottest part of summer.

In hot seasons, butter was kept in the spring house,

a little house built over a spring.

The spring house had cold spring water running through it.

A box was built with different depths of water in it.

At one end, maybe it was only about an inch deep

for smaller things like butter to sit in.

Then it graduated to another depth for small jars,

then one for large jars and a churn.

A spring house might be built of wood,

but more often it was built of stone.

It could be small or large.

Inside the spring house it was very cold,

and food would keep a long time.

It's what people did before refrigeration.

Inside a spring house

Getting back to butter...

the butter was worked in a wooden butter bowl 

with the hands or wooden paddles.

Butter bowls were also used for making biscuits!

 Butter paddles were used to slap the last bit of liquid out 

and to shape the butter, sometimes into balls.

 Sometimes the butter was put into ceramic or tin molds called prints.  

German Butter Prints

Poorer folks put their butter into a simpler mold

usually round or shaped like a square or rectangle.

Sometimes these molds were made of ceramic, 

but more often, of wood.

Simple butter mold

A fancier mold.

Prints were packed into small jars and set back into the water to keep cold.

The wooden molds were set in shallow water and kept in the spring house.

  The churn with what was left was set back in deeper water to keep it cold for drinking.  

Later, when families got smaller,

churn molds were used for making smaller amounts of butter.

These were made of wood, and later glass, 

and had paddles inside that were rotated with a handle

which was turned.

Glass Paddle Churn

Wooden Paddle Churn

However the butter was made,

it was important part of being a housewife,

and many a girl child was given the job

of sitting and churning the butter.

Where a gentle way is used in making Butter, it will cut like Wax, 

and it should especially be well wrought with the Hands, 

when it is fresh taken from the Churn and salted for common use; 

for if the Milk be not well work'd out of it, the Butter will not keep. 

Richard Bradley, The Country Housewife, 1728

Butter was often packed in a salted brine for keeping:

Pack your butter in a clean, scalded firkin [small barrel], 

cover it with strong brine, 

and spread a cloth all over the top, and it will keep good ... 

Lydia Child, The American Frugal Housewife, 1835

The leftover product of making butter is what we call buttermilk. 

How many of you can remember 

that ice cold glass of buttermilk 

we used to get at the country fair 

and why did it taste so much better 

than the stuff we bought at the corner market? 

Remember having a buttermilk mustache? 

Remember rolling your tongue around the globs of butter that floated on top? 

That taste is stamped into my summer memories... 

Cold Buttermilk in a Mason Jar.
MMMMmmmmmm!

Nothing was ever wasted in those days, 

and if there was clabbered milk or spoiled butter 

it was fed to the hogs or chickens, 

or if it wasn't too awfully gone, 

it was used to make biscuits. 

Buttermilk biscuits. 

There's nothing like them! 

Here is an old recipe you might like to try:

At any rate,

whatever the reasons Chap and Fielden had 

for walking into town that hot summer day, 

it most certainly wasn't to buy butter.

I really want to tell you the story,

but I've gone off and gotten side-tracked 

and I've run out of time,

so I'll save it for Sunday.

Be sure and come back.

It will surely make you laugh out loud.