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| Crock and dasher type butter churns at our booth at Factory Antique Mall in Verona, VA. |
It isn't hard to make butter. All it takes is cream and some method of agitation. The process of agitating the cream separates the solids from the liquids, or the butter from the milk. In the article THE HUNT FOR A BETTER BUTTER CHURN, the author explains it this way:
"Butter is formed when the membranes surrounding the fat globules in cream are stripped through the process of agitation. This allows the fat to clump together in a single mass, i.e., butter."
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| Butter Paddles used to "work" the milk out of the butter fat. |
The simplest way to make butter is to put a small amount of cream in a jar and shake it (a fun little project for children) and there is not much evolution in the process of making butter over hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. (THE HISTORY OF BUTTER shares that the earliest reference to the making butter is a 4500 year old limestone tablet with illustrations of the process.) Dashers with an up and down motion, barrels that turn, containers that rock, and jars with paddles that were hand cranked all followed the same principle of agitating the cream to separate solids from the liquids. Later, the addition of an electric motor to the churn made making butter more convenient and less time consuming.
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| Small Hand Crank Vintage Churn |
According to THE NIBBLE: HISTORY OF BUTTER FROM PREHISTORY TO OUR HISTORY,
The transition from butter made by individual farmers’ wives, to creameries that collected milk from local made butter on a larger scale using machinery, began about 1860. The factory system of butter-making made rapid strides and received tremendous impetus through the introduction of the centrifugal cream separator and the invention of a simple method by which the exact butter fat content of milk and cream could be determined by the creamery operator. Modern firkins, tightly-made oak barrels, kept butter fresh for up to four months without refrigeration, and permitted shipment to distant markets.
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| Vintage Electric Churn original to our Southwest Virginia Property which was once a working dairy. |
While the process of butter has remained basically the same over time, the years have given us a variety of churns of interest for those, like myself, who enjoy collecting them and while it may be more convenient to buy butter from the local grocery store, in recent years the art of making butter at home has resurfaced as more and more individuals realize not only the quality of the taste of butter made from fresh cow's milk but also the health benefits of butter from naturally raised, grazing dairy cattle.
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| It would be interesting to know how many pounds of butter I have made in the last ten years. This is my "go to" electric churn. |
Interest in butter churns and the making of butter at home has proven to be a popular subject in recent years. A post I wrote in 2009 entitled NOT ALL BUTTER CHURNS ARE CREATED EQUAL happens to be one of my most viewed entries on the blog proving that a number of people are still interested in the ancient skill of butter making.
Additional Links:
Home Churns and Utensils
Spread the Word
The History of Butter