90 Old Days on the Farm 



churn full of heavy cream was considered an 

 effective way to develop the biceps muscles of the 

 operator, more particularly if the butter was con- 

 trary and wouldn't ''come" in a reasonable time. 

 I've known churnings to take a half -day and then 

 everybody would be warm and excited about the 

 milkhouse. Thermometers were not hanging on 

 the walls of the dairy then and the temperature 

 of the cream was taken, probably, by dipping 

 into it with the index finger of the right hand 

 or left hand if the dairymaid were ambidex- 

 trous. 



As a boy I churned and I recall that the lid of 

 the churn was often raised that I might take a 

 peek in to see if the cream had "broken." The 

 "broken" stage w^as the condition reached just 

 before the butter had "come." I recall, too, that, 

 to encourage me, my mother would pour in a 

 limited quantity of warm water to get the tem- 

 perature just right, I presume. What a sigh of 

 relief we youngsters would yield up when the sepa- 

 ration process developed. I mean, of course, not 

 only when the butter became separated from the 

 buttermilk, but also when we could separate our- 

 selves from the handle of the churn. I've known 

 fellows who were so fond of buttermilk that they'd 

 gladly churn just to get a "fill-up" on that liquid 

 beverage, but I was never such an enthusiastic 

 buttermilk-bibber that I'd find myself drawn 

 toward dairying pursuits in order to gratify my 

 appetite — ^particularly by buttermilk. With the 



