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8 Dairy on the Prairie
Pioneer Dairying Delaware County from 1861 until her Girls milking cows. Courtesy ofState Historical Society
death in 1888, her substantial butter of Iowa, Iowa City.
Pioneer women typically were responsible for milk- income paid for the family's cloth,
ing, cheese-making, and butter churning, with the shoes, and school books, as well as Churning butter in a
resultant products meant for home consumption. food staples.31 barrel churn. Photograph
Daughters and young sons assisted in these duties. courtesy of the Minneso-
Any surplus of home-manufactured butter and cheese Churning took place several times ta Historical Society
was sold to other settlers, local merchants, and trav- per week, with between two and ten Loc# GT2.51 p31 Neg#
eling butter dealers. Women's yearly income from pounds churned per instance. The
cheese and butter sales could exceed their husband's butter would be saved until between 11094.
income from grain and livestock sales. In the case of 25 and 100 pounds of product had
Emily Hawley Gillespie, who lived near Manchester, accumulated, then packed and sold.
Cheese-making was a less frequent
N OT ONLY WAS MILK PROCESSING task and required more skill, partic-
TIME-CONSUMING, BUT, GIVEN ularly in timing the many steps in-
THAT REFRIGERATION WAS volved and attaining a precise
VIRTUALLY NON-EXISTENT, PRESERVATION OF temperature when heating the milk.
ALL DAIRY PRODUCTS WAS DIFFICULT. G R O Although cheese is simple to make,
SVENDSEN, A NORWEGIAN SETTLER NEAR flavorful high-quality cheese is chal-
ESTHERVILLE, IOWA, REMARKED ON THE lenging.
TRIBULATIONS OF FOOD PRESERVATION IN
Home-made butter from Midwest-
1863: ern states initially had only a local
market. Eastern butter dealers termed
It is difficult, too, to preserve butter. Midwestern butter "grease" in refer-
One must pour brine over it or salt it; ence to the wagon axle grease it could
otherwise it gets full of maggots. There- resemble. Cheese received similar ac-
fore it is best, if one is not too far from claim. This negative eastern view of
town, to sell the butter at once. This Western dairy products was due to in-
summer we have been getting from consistencies in manufacturing quality,
eight to ten cents a pound. Not a great with no large-scale producers on the
profit. For this reason people around scene to consistently produce a good
here do not have many cows—just product, coupled with the long time it
enough to supply the milk needed for took to transport butter in the pre-rail-
the household. It's not wise to have road era. Overall, it seems that home-made Western
more than enough milk, because the butter and cheese were of good quality, although it
flies are everywhere.32 only took a few rotten cooks—and excessive trans-
port time—to spoil the butter image.
Butter pails and churn.33
