You'd Butter Behave

I've told this account of my Adorable Cousin in the grocery store buying bacon more than once, but it goes well with this post. Adorable Cousin is standing in the checkout line to pay for her bacon, and overhears the cashier and another customer bad mouthing bacon. I don't know if they didn't like her bacon, or someone else's bacon, or just felt like saying unkind things about bacon. Apparently it must have had to do with her bacon because when she gets to the counter she slaps her package on the counter and says these infamous words: "If my ancestors walked across this continent with bacon grease dripping from their lips, I guess it won't hurt me either."

Pioneers, yes they were sturdy souls, and yes, some of them did walk across this continent. They had to be survivors, taking their own few tools to raise their crops. They took their own seeds and enough food for their family for several months.

I remember the first time I became acquainted with the Laura Ingalls series and how much I loved her books. Some misguided people have criticized her books of late, and that makes me sad. Maybe just a bit disgusted as well. These books give us an insight into the life of the pioneers.

In one of her books, if memory serves me at all it was perhaps her first Little House in the Big Woods, she describes how Ma made butter. Butter isn't terrible hard to make.

Old Fuzzy has made a homemade milking machine and uses two one gallon pickle jars. He brings in the milk and we strain it through a cotton strainer into two ice cream buckets. Here on the counter I have one bucket that has sat at least overnight to let the cream rise to the top. In the above picture I have an aluminum 'skimmer'. This skimmer was one my grandpa made using the pattern of his mother's skimmer. I don't know how old it is, but grandpa passed away in the early 1990s. It has a rolled edge (away from us) and a triangle of punched holes in order for the cream to escape. I have a plastic cool whip bowl sitting on a plastic lid to catch any cream that does escape. Next to that I have a Daisy Churn, and the salt on the end was a leftover of clutter I didn't get moved.

These two pics show me skimming the cream from the top of the milk and pouring it into the bowl.

The cream on this isn't as heavy as it often is, but I'm going to put this cream in the fridge for my coffee. This next pic shows cream in the mixer bowl and the attachment I use. The Daisy churn is what I used when the kids were at home and growing up. I also had enough cream several times a week to fill the churn. I don't have that much any more, so when I do make butter, which isn't often, it's about the Cool Whip container size full.

I put it in the mixer and drape a towel over it to keep the splatter contained and turn it on high. It usually takes between five and ten minutes.

Some of my pictures don't seem to be here, but I scrape the butter off the attachment, drain the buttermilk off through the colander.

The next pictures show me salting the butter, but we missed several of washing the butter in plain, cold water until the water comes out mostly clean. Then I put a bit of salt in the butter and wash it throughout. This is a Tablespoon measure, so it is less than that, but it's more the one teaspoon.

The butter paddle I'm using at one time had a nice handle, but I had an over-zealous butter washer that was attempting to squeeze all of the water out and broke the handle off.

This picture was from last week, and there was a bit more butter this week, but it comes out with the same look. Our batch this time was about eleven ounces.

The pictures showed the mixer and the Daisy churn, but my daughter has used just a quart jar to churn in. Somewhere we have half gallon jars that you just put a lid on and (either the half gallon or the quart) with a lid, and you shake them back and forth until it turns to butter. When the butter fat is good and rich it doesn't take long no matter what. Then you follow the washing and if you prefer, the salting.

I read a site quite a few years ago that was chatting about making butter, and several on the chat were wondering about 'washing'. Yes, you do wash the butter. Otherwise it gets putrid with the butter milk getting more and more sour. I like fresh, sweet cream butter so I don't let mine sit and/or ripen.

When I first came back to my grandparents' farm and was old enough to be expected to do things to help around the house my cousin (Cousin Coco, not Adorable) was there before me. I don't know how long she had been there, but she was wise to churning butter. I was not.

She was a year older than I, and somewhat more tricky as well. "I just love churning butter," she said turning the handle on the churn. "This is so much fun..."

When I just said butter (when the butter fat is real good, usually in the spring when the cow just comes fresh after birthing her calf) butter will develop quickly within five to ten minutes or less. However, in the autumn when the grass and feed isn't quite as good, and the quality has dropped off it can take much longer. Thirty minutes maybe more, and I've had some that never did butter.

It was in this time when we were churning butter, and dear Coco was telling how much fun it was. I fell for it hook line and stinker. I couldn't wait to take my turn at the churn. Once I was established she disappeared never to be seen again. At least not for another turn at the churn. I was a fast learner though. Cousins—they help you learn so many things.

Job 29:6 "When my steps were washed with butter, And the rock poured me out streams of oil!"