When I was eight years-old we started getting our milk directly from the local dairy. After the glass gallon
jars sat in the fridge overnight, there was a good two inches of cream at the top. I’m sorry to say that I thought cream was gross. I’d scoop it off when mom wasn’t looking, instead of shaking it up as directed, so that the “good” milk didn’t get contaminated with butter fats. Silly child. But the one good thing about all that cream was that sometimes my dad would scoop into a quart jar and make butter by simply shaking the jar. He had pretty good stamina because I remember him shaking for a long time. Then with a little salt, you had a very decent glob of butter. I loved butter.
All this came back to me the other day when I was whipping cream for a frosting and overwhipped it and came up with, you guessed it, whipped butter. I still put it on the cake, but it was a little greasier than it should have been. My husband is not particular, thank goodness.
Butter churning has been around for thousands of years. The earliest butter churns date back around 6,500 years to Israel. They were ceramic vessels that mimicked animal skins. Why? Because that was how nomadic cultures churned butter and made kefir. They put the cream in a vessel made of animal skin and shook it, very much like the way my dad would shake his quart jar, or even easier, simply tie it to a pack animal. The butter would churn as the animal walked. The ceramic churns were made to lay on their sides and rocked back and forth, sometimes with the aid of a rope.
The plunge churn was used in early America and is the churn I think of most often. It consists of a wooden contain into which the cream is poured, a flat lid with a hole and a plunger, which is worked up and down until butter forms. After the butter forms, the buttermilk (yes, that’s where it came from) is poured off and the butter is placed in a shallow trough called a butter worker. A fluted roller was rolled over the butter, water was added, then drained off. This process continued until all the buttermilk was removed from the butter.
The paddle churn is what my dad should have had. It’s a container, sometimes glass, that has a lid and a handle that turns a churn, which creates the butter.
The barrel churn appeared in 18th century Europe and works on the same principle as the paddle churn only on a larger scale.
There were of course many variations on these themes, including one in which the churn was attached to a rocking chair and the churner rocked their way to butter. Someone else came up with a treadmill upon which a sheep or dog would walk to turn the crank and churn the butter. One of the more realistic designs involved a foot treadle like those on old fashioned sewing machines. That would have been my go-to.
Now let’s get silly. For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, what is the most creative way you can think of to churn milk into butter?
Misty M. Beller is a USA Today bestselling author with over 1 million books old. She writes romantic mountain stories, set on the 1800s frontier and woven with the truth of God’s love. Raised on a farm and surrounded by family, Misty developed her love for horses, history, and adventure. These days, her husband and children provide fresh adventure every day, keeping her both grounded and crazy.
I grew up in the rural west, and like most regions of the country I grew up with words specific to the area that might sound strange to people from other places. Jockey box comes to mind. Currently, a jockey box is a cooler used to cool tap beverages in temporary locations. Those of us from north Idaho, though, know that a jockey box is a glove compartment found in vehicles. The term comes from stage coaches. The driver sat on a bench which held a storage compartment beneath it and was thus called a jockey box. I’ve trained myself to say glove compartment, but I know in my heart that its a jockey box.
What inspired my books? I’m often asked what inspires a book? Where do your ideas come from? The truth is they come from many places. Past experiences, dreams, bible verses, music… life. I think from now on I’ll answer with that one word- Life.
