Making Butter--Chapter 1: Getting Started

Well, it’s about time! Despite my best efforts, I just haven’t been able to get around to getting the butter making event posted. Here goes!

We might have to call this Chapter 1 because it's going to run a little long. I don’t plan to get highly technical with this, so if you want more science, there are a number of really good sites out there on the internet and I encourage you to look them up. One of my favorites is http://www.webexhibits.org/butter/making.html">Butter.

I did not grow up on a farm. However, I did grow up in a predominantly agricultural area of Tennessee and lots of folk churned butter, including my aunt who would let me try it now and then. My academic background is in anthropology and archaeology, not food science. Through research, I am acquainted with the basic science of the process and even had the opportunity to talk with a chemist about it. It can get very technical. In preparing for my work as a butter churner, I had numerous sources such as the excellent Foxfire series and other first-hand accounts collected by folklorists from those who churned many pounds of butter over the course of their lives. When I do the butter making demonstrations, I usually incorporate a little science into the process because it is really interesting, but I don’t want to take up so much space, so I’m giving you an assignment: go look it up! For this entry, I will mostly just do this off the top of my head and not go look up the more technical information to include. I hope I am not disappointing those of you who want more.

Before I begin, I should probably explain a few things. The living history museum where do my 19th century thing focuses on rural North Alabama farm life in the mid- to late 1800s. There are a number of actual 19th century farm houses and other structures that have been relocated to the site and restored in order to give the visitor a picture of life in another era. We have interpreters who wear reproduction historic dress and engage in a variety of activities that would usually be done on a farm during the time period. We do third-person interpretation rather than first-person interpretation. That means that we are not trying to portray a specific individual who lived in one of the houses or even create a fictitious persona of the time period. We wear the type of clothing and do the activities of the time, but explain things as modern folk who like to help others understand and appreciate the past and who like to dress up in silly looking clothes and get hot, sweaty, and dirty in the summer and cold and dirty in the winter. Being a living history interpreter is a great way to both teach and learn history. At our site, we try to be as accurate as possible in our depiction of daily 19th century life, but when we have events and have to accommodate large numbers of people and allow them to join in the activities, we can't always stick to strictly period methods or materials. This is the case with the butter making activity that I am about to share with you. In my photos, you will see things like paper towels, plastic sandwich bags, paper plates, and other things from the present that make it a little easier for people to enjoy the experience.

Traditionally, making butter by hand is done by saving the cream (the milk fat) from your cow's milk until you have enough to churn into butter. If you have more than one cow, it doesn't take as long to accumulate enough cream. The basic steps involve milking the cow, then allowing the cream to rise to the top of the milk and skimming it off, then putting the cream into another container (the butter churn), usually allowing it to set out at room temperature overnight, then agitating it until the fat molecules began to stick together or "gather." After the butter has "gathered" or "come," it is removed from the churn and worked and rinsed to remove the buttermilk from it. This improves the texture of the butter and allows it to keep longer because milk that is left in it will sour before the fat goes rancid. Once this step is finished, the butter can be put in a butter mold to give it a nice, decorative shape or it can be shaped into a "pat" (a rounded ball of butter) by hand and wrapped in butter paper, placed in a butter crock, or just put on a small dish.

Here is a photo of a young lady hard at work at her churn. The cloth that is wrapped around the top of the churn is to prevent the cream from splashing out as the dasher (the long handle sticking out of the churn; it has an X-shaped attachment at the bottom to increase the agitation) is raised up and down in the churn to agitate the fat molecules. Hmm. It appears that she needs a little help in getting the dish towel wrapped back around the top of the churn. She was a good helper.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Butter

I haven't been able to get anything posted for a few days, so here's a little bit before I go do my thing at the local living history museum today. The monthly "Step Back in Time" evens focus on some aspect of 19th century farm life. Today is Dairy Day. I will be manning the butter making station all day. There will be a couple of churns for folks to try their hands at making butter the old-fashioned way, but the real hands-on part involves putting a little heavy whipping cream in a Mason jar and shaking it (with the lid on) until it forms butter. This is always a big hit for Dairy Day and I'm kept busy all day helping kids and adults make butter. People don't usually want to try it until they see me make some, then they are enthralled and want to try. The whole thing takes about five minutes. Amazing! I even have folks come back for a second or third go at it. I'll try to make pictures to post later.

Have a great weekend!

For Phyllis

My friend, Phyllis, grew up in Kentucky horse country. Here is a poem by James Wright (Poets.org) that I thought she might like.












A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.















top photo:
http://rockinghranch.freeservers.com/photo.html
bottom photo:
http://www.doublediamond.org

For Memorial Day

TAPS

Day is done...Gone the sun
From the lake...
From the hills...
From the sky.
All is well...Safely rest
God is nigh.

Fading light....Dims the sight
And a star....Gems the sky....Gleaming bright
From afar....Drawing nigh
Falls the night.

Composed By Major General Daniel Butterfield

A Happy Medium

Lest ye think that I am too wrapped up in the seeing with the heart thing, I offer these words of Ben Franklin:

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

We need to seek moderation to avoid being excessively one way or the other. If you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs system of personality types, you might have figured out my personality type by now. I won't take the time to try to explain the system to you. You might take advantage of the Internet for that. The categories in the system reveal our dominant traits and preferred ways of viewing things and working through things--sort of like being right- or left-handed. I think that there is always room for a happy medium in how we interact with the people and the world around us and how we make make decisions. And, like the dominant hand analogy, the non-dominant side can be trained to be functional as well. I think Franklin's suggestion helps to bring moderation to our lives.

Take a Look

Here is a quote that I received through the "Daily e-Quiet Moment" from Catholic Digest. I thought I would share it with you.

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.

These are the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India (1947-1964). I have previously talked about seeing with the heart and using the eyes as windows through which we may look out with the heart at the world around us. I think that the statement by Nehru gives us a good way to begin "seeing rightly."

The next time you take a look at the world around you, open your eyes and see the beauty, charm, and adventure there is to see.

Spinning

Here is a poem by Walt Whitman that I often think of when I am spinning.

A Noiseless, Patient Spider


A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.





The photo is of a lovely black and yellow argiope, commonly known as a "writing spider." They are among my favorite spiders, but I'm also fond of jumping spiders and wolf spiders. The little black and white drawing is of a spider "ballooning." It is letting out strands of silk filament to catch the wind so that it may be carried away on the breeze to a new location. Scientists believe that this is how spiders managed to spread themselves all over the world--even across large bodies of water--just by letting themselves be blown about on the wind, sailing along on their little silk threads.

When I am spinning, the fiber becomes a part of me. As I spin, filament after filament twists together to form a thread that goes from hand to wheel, twisting and winding in a harmony I cannot describe, but feel and sense as the fiber slips out from my hand, twirling and winding onto the bobbin. I am reeling out my thoughts, my energy, my love, my spirit, my soul into a thread that will connect me to something else. Someone else. Someplace else. "Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them;" as the poet says. The thread from me, from my hands, out, out to where I cannot go. Taking part of me with it; taking me out with it. I draft and draw out the fiber; I draft and draw out my soul. Unlike the spider, I cannot balloon myself away on my fragile thread to other places, other worlds, but the fiber I spin can take a part of me with it wherever it goes. It carries a part of me as long as it lasts for I have put my very self, a part of me, into my thread. The noiseless, patient spider sending itself out on a fine thread. The noiseless, patient spinner sending herself out on a fine thread, her soul out on a little twisted filament.

"Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul"."



(read this poem and more at poets.org)