August 30, 1987
By Deborah Curtis Drummy
Vigo County Historical Society
Morning chores allowed time for dreams
I knew it would eventually come to this. All the years of raising small livestock--honey bees, a mule, rabbits, pheasants, turkeys, ducks, geese, and more chickens than I care to count. It all was just practice for what I knew was bound to happen. My husband has decided we’re going to get a cow.
When he announced his intentions, my first response was, “Fine, but let’s wait until Samuel is old enough to do the morning milking.”
Since our son isn’t even 1 year old, I suspected that my suggestion wouldn’t go over. It didn’t. Within a year, we’ll have a cow, no doubt about it. And despite my original misgivings, I think I’ll be glad.
The keeping of at least one family cow (and often more in larger families) was standard practice in rural America before the turn of the century. Milking was a much the domain of the farm wife as cooking, sewing, and cleaning, and it involved a whole series of tasks.
The cows had to be milked morning and evening without fail. The whole milk then was cooled in crocks or shallow pans in a springhouse or cellar and the cream was allowed to rise. The cream was skimmed off the top, churned, and worked into butter.
Since the production went on every day, the amount of milk and butter produced surpassed home consumption needs. Excess milk was fed to hogs and chickens, while butter was taken to market for sale or trade.
The invention of mechanical refrigeration in 1875 and the centrifugal cream separator in 1878 markedly increased the overall efficiency of the home dairy. The development of pasteurization in 1893 dramatically improved the safety.
Milking machines came into common use around 1920, but the machines still were used mostly by dairy operations with larger herds. On the small farm with just a few cows, hand milking was more practical. It was quicker to hand milk than to keep the milking machines clean.
My father recalls having five cows to milk back in the 1930s. One at a time, the cows were tied to a post in a clean stall where they were fed grain. The cows’ udders and the milker’s hands were carefully washed and the milk was collected in clean buckets.
I can imagine my father, then a boy, sitting on the milking stool, pondering life’s questions, great and small, and dreaming dreams of where his life would go. And that is why my enthusiasm for taking on a milk cow has increased to much. What a wonderful opportunity for meditation and reflection, sitting on a stool in a dimly lit barn, hearing the rooster’s first crow of the day, my head nestled into the side of a big, warm, grateful beast. Grateful in a way I understand as a nursing mother; the first milking of the day brings great relief. And I’ll dream my dreams and ponder life’s mysteries.
When I look at this week’s historical treasure, a milking stool on display in the basement of the museum, I won’t be able to help wondering who sat on that stool, perhaps 100 years ago, and what decisions and dreams may have been contemplated.
It reminds me to keep in mind that many of the artifacts on display in the museum are unavoidably out of context, and that they once were common elements in the everyday drama of human life.
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.