Signals: When lunchtime or suppertime came and Dad was working way down on the "flat" (this was a huge chunk of land across the road from our house) -- a distance of maybe three-quarters of a mile, maybe less, it was my duty to stand on the front porch waving a white cloth. I usually stood there until I could see the return wave of his hat or until I decided he had seen me and was headed back up to the house. Sometime, Dad would be working with the noisy, old 1020 tractor (photo coming someday), or at other times, Dad would be using the team of horses. They didn’t have cellular phones, air-conditioned cabins on the vehicles, or any other of the wonderful conveniences farmers have today. Once back in the driveway, Dad would first take the horses to the huge black water tank near the upper well, then, he'd tie them to a nearby post. He'd wash up for lunch and depending on how hard we kids had worked that morning, it seemed by the twelth of never before he'd get settled down at the head of the cloth-laden table. Lunch was always my favorite meal. We ate plain food -- and the garden provided much of the food Mom cooked. Sometimes the hired man would bring a zucchini or two and Mom would invariably cook them up the same day he brought them. One of my choicest dishes was peas, or beans cooked with a few new potatoes -- and then served in milk -- my husband can’t understand this at all!!! And somehow, neither my husband nor myself can make this taste like Mom made it. Dad would usually take a short nap and be out on the flat by 2 p.m.

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Another strange signal was during the 1940’s when my older sister slept upstairs on my grandmother’s side of the double farm house. These were sort of duplex living quarters and in order to get from our living quarters to my grandmother’s one had to go out through the woodshed. Mind you, when winter brought 30 degree below mornings, that route was avoided. My sister worked in the city and it was necessary to awaken her early so that someone could drive her into the city (we girls didn’t learn to drive in those days until after we were married and in our middle 20’s). In order for Mom to awaken her, Mom would take the broomhandle and pound on the under part of the stairsteps which were located in the pantries. Of course, we had no phones during that time -- not until about 1947, I think. Grandma never did have a phone, even when they became available. I often wonder if my sister thinks about this rude awakening -- guess I’ll have to ask her someday. It will only serve to remind her and the rest of us of the cold, cold house that we woke up to each morning -- b-r-r-r-r!

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Sounds - That Summer Breeze Remember the screens which we used to put in our bedroom window (no air-conditioning in those days) -- we’d raise the window and maneuver the wooden-framed screen into the window opening. At some age we learned to do this ourselves -- took some dexterity to pinch the screen in enough to be able to place it in the opening and not have it fall the long ways down on the lawn below -- then after we got it in, we expanded the screen all the way to the edge to eliminate room for the nasty mosquitoes who could easily manage their way in. Well, this is about sounds so this is what I wanted to say: Mom always had plain, white, diaphanous curtains in our bedrooms -- no draperies for us -- they fell loosely from the rod and when there was a nice breeze coming from the west, there would be a little whirring/whistling sound as it passed through the screen (I love that sound); and what was best, the breeze billowed the curtain way out into the room -- sometimes against the bed. That breeze, as I look back on it, meant contentment and a promise of beautiful days when I didn't have to go to school; or sometimes, it meant that we'd passed through the dog days (our hottest and most uncomfortable days in Jefferson County) and that Fall and all its memorable properties was on its way. Somehow, nowadays, the summer breeze doesn’t feel the same anymore -- been out here in Ohio too long -- I have always said that there’s nothing like living in Jefferson County, N. Y. in the summertime -- not as humid as the mid-western state I’ve lived in for over 30 years, now. (Thought of two songs as I typed this: “The Breeze and I” and “Summer Winds.” - got some more?)

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Calling the cows - During the summer months, my Dad would pasture the cows in the evening in the upper lots which weren’t far from Route #3, the Sackets Harbor Road. They had their choice, usually, of grazing in one field which probably had much more fodder, or going to a lesser pasture more southwest near an old, abandoned road, known to us as the “Crossroad.” Somehow, as morning approached, these cows preferred to pasture at the most remote extremities of the 194-acre farm. Cows must have memories, lest why did they choose one pasture over another. And I’ve wondered which cow led the pack? Maybe the bull, huh? So, in the early morning, about 4:30, Dad would have to fetch them for the morning milking. Sometimes, he’d try his luck at standing on the porch beneath my bedroom and yelling out the familiar sound of “Com Boss.” (not bosey, boss!) Now, this “Com Boss” was a special sound -- we all learned how to yell it like Dad did -- he kind of slid into the “Com” and dragged the sound into the more emphasized and more drawn out “Boss,“ which was became almost a half note. You had to work the diaphram pretty effectively in order to make the sound as loud as he could. It was obvious, Dad‘s “Com Boss” was not always heard by their intended targets -- cows can be pretty ornery sometimes, you know. He’d call this about 10 times and then set out on foot to usher them back to the barn -- up the lumpy old lane and up a steep hill, depending on where he thought they’d chosen to hang out for the night. Sometimes, he’d have trouble finding them in one field and have to walk way down another direction to the far pasture (my land now). These are the times I felt very, very sorry for my Dad. And for sure, I worried about him a lot when he had to do this during a thunderstorm. I’d lie there wishing that he wouldn’t have to walk far that morning and pretty soon, I’d go back to sleep. I feel guilty about this even now. You might think that there wasn’t a strict time schedule -- but in a way there was -- the milk had to be at the local cheese factory (which my folks managed) by 9 o’clock and, of course, mother nature played her part. In closing this, I’m not sure my Dad really liked this life -- he always regretted having to drop out of Business School in 1918-19. I never considered Dad a good farmer. I think the conservative nature of my Mom & Dad was ruinous to farming the way farming should have been done in those days. However, I’m sure my siblings and I consider our most favorite memories as those surrounding farm-life and its environs.

One of the Pastures Where the Cows Spent the Night Our farm -- that's me at age 19 on that pile of rocks! These rocks were probably stacked there when the Conklins cleared this land after their 1836 purchase of the property! Always my favorite spot on the farm, this piece of land is owned by my sister, while my husband and I own the land just west of this spot. One can see the Watertown International Airport which lies on the horizon beyond the trees in the background. However, it's very sad to know now that this is all grown up with brush; but I must say, it's heaven for deer hunters at this time of the year!!! (October) Town of Hounsfield in Jefferson County, N. Y.

The Cistern: Webster’s New Collegiate defines a cistern as an artificial reservoir for storing liquids and esp. water; or an often underground tank for storing rainwater. I don’t like the use of the word, artificial, and certainly the word, underground, doesn’t fit the cistern I’m about to tell about. Our farmhouse had a huge cistern, not underground, but in the cellar of the home. There was nothing artificial about this huge container, either. It’s still there, believe me, but not in use, as I was told last week. I wish I knew the capacity of the cistern in our farmhouse, but I don’t. It took up the area under the whole front of the house - and was walled in about 6 feet high - I can’t tell you the front-to-back width -- but it was large. The house had what was called eaves-troughs all around it and downspouts took rainwater or melted snow from the eaves-troughs into this cistern. The household used this wonderful soft water for laundry, dishes, and baths and other cleaning. We never drank this water. The water was pumped up to the kitchen by an old fashioned pump (I put up a photo of one someday); after we got electricity, we had an electric pressure pump installed and in 1956, we got a bathroom and the water was plumbed up to the bathroom. Horray! Okay, now you all know what a cistern and how we accessed the contents.

On this February day, my thoughts turned to the making of homemade ice cream. This is about the time of year when winter and boredom make a rather disconcerting two-some - oh, yes, boredom came on the farm as much as in the city at this time of the year. We’d ask Mom if she would make ice cream. She well knew that most of the work to be done on such a project would be willingly done by us children, and that her role was only to make the custard. Our job was to go with pick-axe and baskets to the old apple orchard which was low and flat and had a wonderful base of ice. Took about two bushels of ice to do the job. Meanwhile, Mom would have made the custard, laying it aside to cool. Seems it took forever to cool to the point where our mother would consider it cool enough to proceed!!!! This took about 3 hours -- remember, we had no electricity during these early years - thus no refrigerator.

We had a very old, rustic ice cream maker from the early 30s - we kept it in the woodshed, but for this occasion we brought it into the farm kitchen, where Mom would pour the cooled custard into the container, deposit the wooden/metal paddle and carefully set the whole thing into the wooden bucket. Then the clamp was attached to the portion of the wooden paddle which stuck up out of the custard container and the whole thing connected to a crank. The next step was when our mother pulled out from her vocabulary the words, “be careful” We packed our chopped ice into the bucket and around the container, alternately with rock salt (we called it cow salt and fetched from the huge wooden barrel kept in the garage). Now, I won’t give you a chemistry lesson here, because I didn’t take that course in school. As we neared the top with the salt and ice and around the lid, Mom was particularly on edge for fear we’d get the salt and ice so high that it would seep into the custard. When she felt this part was sufficiently done, we were ready to roll, or crank, that is! Usually the younger of us would be allowed to start because then, the cranking was easy; but as the freezing process started to take hold, of course, were told to keep an steady tempo at the crank, so that we could be assured of a smooth product -- that meant, usually, that someone besides the younger children would take over. I, myself, was tired of being told to keep it steady and I knew full well that the warnings would only become more intense. Has anyone ever been able to tell me what to do!!!! (grin)

You have to remember that during all this cranking, the salt was continually melting the ice, and more ice and a little salt was intermittently being added -- of course, making sure to keep it away from the custard container lid -- for heaven’s sake!!!! As my memory has it, the whole occasion took about a half-hour -- and we knew the custard was getting thicker by how much force it took to crank a complete rotation. When it became almost impossible for the tough guys to crank the unit, Mom would say, “I think it’s done!” Horray -- man, what a moment! While our mother released the clamps and cranks, we girls would fetch the old, white enamel tray with the blue-line edge on it and be nearby with a big spoon for the penultimate next step. What a sensation when she pulled off the cover and we could see the beautiful, thick, wonderfully sweetened ice cream as it snuggled around the wooden paddle. The next step was to pull the paddle out of the ice cream and then lay it on the tray -- oh, what fun to eat all the melting ice cream from this wooden paddle as it rested in that tray. I remember nagging at Mom not to scrape too much off because I knew I could eat it off the paddle as well as from a dish!

Meanwhile Mom and my brother would get the batch ready to “cure.” Now, I’m not all too sure that is the word, but it was the task immediately after the point where we all got out a nice serving of the delicacy. Might have been called “packing.” I’m sure this stage had its time demands also. All that was involved was packing the whole wooden bucket up again with ice and reinserting the metal container full of custard, sans what we had taken out, of course. Then, we’d place the whole thing into one of those big, aluminum laundry tubs we used on washdays -- more ice in that, of course. This was all taken into the woodshed which was attached to the kitchen in the back of the house. I think on warmer days, we also crowned it with a blanket or two - burlap feed bags or whatever was available. There it awaited several visits from the household members at various times of the day, until it was no longer an entity. I think I used to make more visits to the woodshed with my dish and spoon than anyone. One particularly fond memory is my going out to that woodshed on a very cold below zero-night so I could get one more dish of that ice cream.

Some side notes: We had one Jersey cow in our dairy. She produced a higher butterfat (cream) count in her milk than did the others. It was always wise to schedule our ice cream making weekends until after our jersey cow had calved and was being milked once again.

What kinds of ice cream did we make? Well, we weren’t a fancy household and very, very conservative. So, naturally, we made either vanilla or chocolate. Seems we made more vanilla than chocolate, and just maybe that’s another angle in which Shirley always got her way......harummph!!!! I’m not a chocolate lover.

The recipe? Mom’s “by-guess and by-gosh” and however it could be done the cheapest......remember, my folks were conservative. Here is a recipe my mother gave my husband back in 1960:

1 tablespoons Corn Starch
2 tablespoons Flour
1 teaspoon Salt
3 quarts Milk

Cook this in double boiler and then beat

3 whole eggs
2 cups sugar

Add the egg/sugar mixture to the corn starch mixture and cook until thickened.

COOL mixture and then add:

2 teaspoons Vanilla

And why didn’t we just put the finished ice cream in our refrigerator freezer? Two reasons: (1) One, we didn’t have a freezer or electricity. (2) In later years when we did have electricity, the texture seems to have lost some of its precious properties by placing it in a refrigerator freezer.

And why do some recipes call for heavy cream? I’ve tried adding heavy cream and came to the resolve that by using heavy cream the product tasted too much like store-bought ice cream. I swear once you try the inexpensive recipe above, you won’t want the heavy stuff. Mom’s recipe is more like a frozen custard, I suppose.

And one more thought: Only once have I tasted ice cream that tasted as good and that was on the Mall in Washington, D. C. in June of 1972. There was a little custard stand near the Washington Monument which had a remarkable likeness to Mom’s vanilla ice cream. When we went back in June of 1974, it wasn’t the same. Isn’t that always the way?

Writing this makes me want to go to Lehman’s Hardware here in Kidron, Ohio and buy another manual ice cream freezer -- we did have one once, but it wasn’t one which sat in a wooden bucket like our old freezer. I think Lehman does have the old-fashioned kind, but the last I checked they were about $129. By the way, if you ever have a chance to visit Lehman Hardware, go for it -- like a step back into the past, for sure.

Well, I'm getting closer to having that ice cream freezer. At a recent 4-H Garage Sale (a huge sale) I picked up the 2 qt. metal can, the dasher and paddle for practially nothing (part of a huge bag for #2). It's in great shape -- now I just have to find the bucket, crank, etc. to go with it. I have a feeling my Amish neighors may have these parts laying around. (7-2003) Note: December 2005 - still looking.

I'm thrilled to know that my cousin, Charlie, who now lives in Cape Vincent, has been reading my website. He said he enjoyed the ice-cream making story and had one quite similar. Before I present Charlie's letter, please realize that we are first cousins, he, being brought up in the city, and I, on the farm. I think this is the first time since I've been putting together our family's history, that I realized the full impact of family traditions and upbringing. No matter how far from one another we stray, we have a common bond that no one can take away from us -- our ancestors and their way of life. Here's Charlie's version of ice-cream making and be prepared for a little surprise at the end - grin!

December 2005 - Found this photo which shows our girls being given the experience of  homemade ice cream-making -- only this was in the middle of the summer and at our home in Cuyahoga Falls, OH. Also, this bucket was made of plastic -- just didn't seem the same not using one made of wood. The stance of the participants is the same, though.

My Cousin Remembers Making Ice Cream

“I really enjoyed the "ice cream" making episode because this was the same way and recipe that we used. I remember once that my father and I went up Franklin St. into Thompson Park and chipped ice from the stone wall until we had enough for a batch. My mother prepared the "custard" and all was begun. The same type of wooden bucket and container was used together with rock salt. What a Sunday afternoon awaiting the final act of taste and licking the paddles. Well, all was ready and the cover and paddles were removed. All was placed in the same type of pan you mentioned and I took one heaping teaspoon of the delicious looking mixture into my mouth and swallowed it. Lo and behold, I thought I had been poisoned and was going to die. It seems as though no one had noticed that the container was "pitted with small undetectable holes" from previous home manufacturing caused by the salt. Try this sometime to swallow a mouthful of "flavored" rock salt water. Needless to say, I spent a short time driving the "porcelain bus" in the bathroom. I think we retired the whole thing that afternoon and ate popcorn much to my dismay. I haven't been able to find one of these "makers" since the 1940s.”

Note by Shirley: I enjoyed Charlie's style of writing and came to realize that it is similar to that of his maternal grandmother, Effie Warn, whose neat articles appears under "The Clippings" (City of Watertown) portion of my website. One is about streetcars and the other is about travelling shows.

May 4, 2005 -- Sadly, Cousin Charlie Hasner passed away earlier this Spring, as did my remaining brother, Rolly. There were both born in 1930 and I'll miss them both very much. They each had wonderful memories about the days and of their youth and I always looked forward to picking their brains whenever we were together.

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The Depauville Hill

Once or twice a year our family had occasion to travel up or down the Depauville Hill to/from visiting our Canadian cousins or my Uncle's cottage at Fisher's Landing. I was never a good traveler in that each trip more than five miles away gave out to extreme cases of car-sickness for me. Not only did I suffer from that unpleasantness, I always dredded immensely the horrors of the steep hill just north of Depauville. It was so steep I thought we'd never get to the top, or on the way down, I just knew the brakes on the car were going to give out. Of course, there was always the fear that someone would pass us and there'd be a crash with an oncoming car. Here's a photo of the hill taken from a newspaper clipping (unidentified) - the photo indicated the road was being widened in 1930. Perhaps it was also cut down a bit at that time, too. I also remember construction on that hill in the 50's, or am I wrong? Those readers who have followed my family genealogy will know that my Putnam and Lingenfelter families lived within a two mile radius of this hill and my Putnam ancestors are buried to the left on what is known as County Rd. 12 at Three Mill Creek.

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Snowbound: The Walter Snowplow

I've been on the trail of our family's photo of the Walters plow that used to dig us out during the 1930s and 1940s. This gigantic snowplow used to get stuck on the crossroads leading up to our farm in Hounsfield. After it became untangled from the snowbanks, Mom would sometimes have coffee and sandwiches ready for the two men who manned the thing. It was always a big thrill to hear that big plow lumbering away - we could hear it from at least a mile away. My older brothers hooted out "It is the Walters." That meant it was most likely the plow that wasn't going to get stuck down at the crossroad. Wonderful memories -- the hospitality, for sure, and the absolute excitement that we were finally released from our snowbound state. If this all happened before midnight, we found the mailman (Mr. Foster) dragging along soon after the plow went through. My grandmother was a prolific correspondent and the pile of mail which had accumulated was a sight to behold. Great times. Hopefully, our family's keepsake photo will surface soon, but in case it doesn't, I suggest you look at the photos of these humungous snowplows which Marc Mosher presents on the following website: Historical Pictures.   (Dec. 2005 - I was just trying to locate the photo that I directed you to, but was unable to find it. Sorry.)

Well, I've found the photo of the Walter Snowplow once owned by the Village of Glen Park (or Brownville ?). My brother bought it from them in the 1990's, then he sold it. I still haven't found the picture of the Walters plow which belonged to the Town of Hounsfield where we lived. (3-13-2013) Perhaps my sister has it.

Walter Snowplow

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Random Thoughts:

It occurred to me that our mother used to make clothes for us out of cow feed sacks. This was back in the 40’s when cow feed came in very pretty cloth bags. After the feed was used, the bag was opened up, laundered, ironed and easily made into a blouse or a skirt. I remember Mom making both blouses and skirts from these sacks. I almost believe the years in which these feedbags came this way were between 1944 and 1947, but I’m not sure. I can’t recall if the price of the feed was higher because of this. If anyone knows the why or wherefore of cow feedbags coming in these pretty fabrics, would you please write to me? Was the hemp-like bag hard to get during the war?

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My husband remembers during the war years (World War II) when he, his younger brother, and mother would take the coal pail out after dark to the railroad siding where they would pack it with coal that had fallen off the railroad cars. My husband is of Italian descent and lived on a street in Watertown (NY) which was situated in a district known as “The Flats!” My husband thinks he was about 6 years old at the time, making it about 1944.

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Washday on the farm:= - Washday on the farm is one of my favorite memories. My first recollection was that Mom would haul this crude looking tub with a Briggson-Stratton motor mounted on it, out of its corner in the woodshed. It then stood not far from a tiny little door (eye level on the wall) located at the back of the woodshed. I'll tell you more about that later. Of course, this motor was run by gasoline. Mom would drag out the big rinsing tube and situation the wringer over it. Of course, we had no running water, so the water to be used in the washer was heated on the huge, iron cookstove in the kitchen and also taken from the storage tank which was part of the stove. The water would be handcarried to the washing machine. Somewhere along the line Mom had prepared a mixture of her own home-made soap and a product called Felsnaphtha (sp.?), as was a pretty stiff starch, which she would use at varying strengths.

Ready to start up the motor. The next two hours (Mom only washed once a week)would be noisy and the motor used to vibrate on the old wooden floor out there in the woodshed. She then proceeded to agitate the cloths for a period of minutes, run them through the wringer into the rinse-tub (only once!!!!). From there, she spun the wringer around so after sloshing the cloths around in the rinse water, it would be available for running through the wringer into a bushel basket to be taken out to the clotheslines. Now, that bushel baset was an ornery thing. If you approached it the wrong way, you'd get slivers. If you carried it too full, the thin, wire-like handles would hurt the folds in your hand - particularly if you carried it to the clothesline in very cold weather. The one thing I remember most about those former peach baskets was that they were bedecked with old Watertown Daily Times. I'm now amazed that the newsprint of the day didn't bleed through to the clothes. Nowadays, most daily newspapers are using an ink that turns one's hand black at one reading session. If a garment required starch, she would take that into the kitchen where the starch was located. As the years went by, it was evident that I had watched my mother starch a shirt. I never forgot her technique: Gather the collar, the button hole side all the way down, then the cuffs - dip into a quite heavy starch and squeeze out the excess water.

The clothesline scene was a story in itself. Mom would have lines running from the front porch on the westside of our farmhouse to a maple tree. Later in my childhood, she acquired a pulley arrangement which made matters a whole lot easier. We could stand on the porch and place the articles on the line. Sometimes, however, an item would drop down on the ground underneath and we'd have to retrieve it. Some of the lines were strung between the porch and the tree without the use of a pulley. You can believe those were the lines which stretched a lot and soon lowered the heavy clothes almost to the ground. It was then, that we fetched poles with a notched end and drove it into the clothesline at appropriate points as a support. Sometimes we didn't affix into place as rigidly as we should have and if there was a wind, it would pull and haul on the arrangement, completely toppling it to the opposite direction. Then, the clothes on the line would be touching the ground again. One almost had to babysit these clothes throughout the drying session. There were times when Mom would have clothes out at the northeast side of the farmhouse -- those were usually those ugly overalls and what one calls today, "jeans." When freezing weather came, we used to bring the demins into the house as frozen statues and wait for them to transform into the life of a dry state. To this day I have never worn jeans and that might be attributed to the hateful stiffness of my brother's jeans -- they certainly weren't "stone-ground" jeans.

Before I leave this topic, I would like to talk a little about soap-making. Mom would make homemade soap out of fat and lye and old perfume if she had it. I think the fat was made as a by-product of the butchering season. I seem to recall Mom putting all the odd pieces into a huge kettle and boiling it down for several hours. Then, I recall that she used to clarify this fat by putting in a few large slices of potato. I would patiently wait for the process to end, so I could have the pieces of potato to eat.

If there was an objective to talking about laundry here, it is that when I was looking through 1926 microfilm, I found an ad which caught my attention. It was for "Rinso" -- a laundry detergent of the day. It was captioned, "'Use Rinso,' say washing machine makers" Placed in the ad was a placard-like box saying:

Makers of these 22 leading washers recommend Rinso for its safety and for a cleaner, whiter wash:

(the list follows)

A.B.C.
American Beauty
Apex
Blackstone Arrow
Big 3
Coffield
Dexter
Gainaday
Haag
Hart-Parr
Holland Maid
Horton
Laun-Dry-ette
Master
Meadows
Meadow Lark
1900 Cataract
One Minute
Rotarex
Savage
Sunnysuds
Sunbeam-Suds
Universal
Vose
Washrite
Whirlpool
Woodrow

Usually Mom's wash was done on Monday. That left ironing to be done on Tuesdays. My mother used to iron the sheets, believe it or not. Of course, the fabrics weren't smooth and wash 'n wear like they are today. She used tableclothes on a daily basis and there were usually four or five of those in her wash. The girls in her family always wore dresses, so these were several of those in the weekly laundry, too -- after 1942, she had three girls in the family. My brothers never wore sweatshirts to school, so ironing of shirts was included in the ironing task. I particularly remember when my older brother went to work as a salesman for International Harvestor that there were always 6 white shirts to be provided. When I think of all this ironing, I really feel sorry that my mother had to do all this work. She never once complained. And I don't remember anyone ever thanking her for doing all this work. Couldn't we have at least admired, as she must have, the clothesbars full of ironed items, as they lay there waiting to fully dry before she put them away. It was a beautiful site indeed. Did we ever thank her? No. I, for one, feel great regret that I never said, thank you.

The Brownville Cheese Factory - Managed by my parents

Within the last few weeks the listers on the Jefferson County Mailing List mentioned the Heath Cheese Factory of Rodman, N. Y. . It caused me to think about my childhood once again. My parents ran a cheese factory in Brownville and consorted with Mr. Heath many times. They used to help one another when they ran out of supplies.

Acquiring the taste for cheese curd from the older factories in Jeff. Co. wasn't hard to do -- the milk was not pastuerized - it was raw milk brought in by the farmers or their hauler and made right away into cheese -- usually cheddar and another kind the name of which I can't remember. The curd was wonderful.

Along about noon each day, the heated milk turned to cheese and would be raked and set and the little particles of loose cheese left over (maybe a couple of quarts) was the curd. In the 1950's the State began to regulate cheesemaking to such a degree that the curd from this unpasteurized cheese was no longer allowed to be sold. WHAT A SAD, BUT GOOD THING. Sometimes Dad would meander over to the factory and we kids would sneak out the cheese curd. Oh, how I long for some of that cheese curd. It had a completely different flavor than the cheese curd one buys nowadays. And the cheddar? The rounds of cheese had to be stored in the factory for 60 days, before a buyer (usually Kraft Foods) could come in and make his bid. Apparently, aging destroyed the germs??????

In the Watertown-Jefferson County area there was a superior place to take milk -- it was called the Hygienic Dairy. Usually, the farmer who kept his operation in meticulous order, took his milk there. Hygienic paid more, too. But the little, poor farmer, who couldn't keep up monetarily the cleanliness standards, would search out the smaller factories. It was certainly a good thing that the State began to make periodic inspections of the farms and demanded restrictions of the sale of the cheese and by-products.

Did you know that the farmers' pay for their milk was based on the butterfat (cream) content of the milk. You can bet the housewife didn't go to the milkhouse frequently for the purpose of getting heavy cream for whipping, etc. Each farmer's milk was tested each day -- and averaged out for the week. Needless to say, a lazy, lax, or uninterested cheesemaker, could cause much grief for those in charge of the cheese factory. Talk about tearing your hair out!!!!!! One problem after another. - January 8, 2006

 

Come back, soon -- I’ve lots more to write about. Thanks for visiting.

Shirley

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