By Petronelle Clifton Brown
Transcript
Spearman’s Grocery on the Main Street, Cashel, was a fine shop. Immediately at the front door the wonderful mixture of smells hit: dried fruit, spices (the only place to buy dried root ginger), the salted bacon being freshly cut on the manual slicer, on the floor, earthy sacks of potatoes, carrots and swedes. Then, on the counter, pounds of home-made country butter wrapped in plain butter paper. This was in the 1950s when everyone was trying to make “ends meet” so we all exchanged goods and services in an informal barter system.
On the farm we kept some cows. Micky Shelley milked them every morning and evening. The cows, being creatures of habit, were at the gate on time waiting to amble to their own places in the cowhouse.
Micky talked and sang to the cows: “There you are girls, there’s a nice sup of hay for you; now stand, steady.” Then the udders were washed with warm water and a cloth. Micky sat on a 3 legged stool with a milk bucket held between his knees and, laying his head against the cow’s warm side, the rhythm of miking began.
At first the milk stream sounded high notes as the milk spurts hit an empty bucket. But gradually the notes deepened under the fully foaming fill.
And Micky always sang in time to the milking. (By the way, he was a great Irish dancer too – being described as being able “to dance on eggshells”, despite the fact that he spent all day in heavy hobnail boots.)
There was a warmth and peace in the cowshed, sounds of cows munching and the smell of hay, hide, dung and the odd damp Tweed coat. A passing farm cat or dog might look in for the strippings, which was the beginning of milking, on a dish.
Milking done, Micky carried the two pails of milk across the cobbled yard to the house dairy. This was a small whitewashed, scrubbed and scalded room. No refrigeration then but a real standard of hygiene – not just superficial sprays as now.
There in the dairy stood the centrifugal separator, which was an ingenious invention operated by hand. Micky poured the strained warm milk into the top hole and the separated milk poured out of one spout and the lesser quantity of cream out of the other.
Now it was the time for the women of the house. The cream was covered and left to go naturally sour for several days. This is the difference between sweet cream, creamery butter and the much more flavoursome country butter. Meanwhile the skimmed milk was fed back to the calves.
The sour cream was churned by hand in a round wooden table churn. Traditionally anyone who came in gave a few extra turns of the handle “to help the butter come”.
It could be hours of churning, especially in the warm Summer. We’d sit on the stairs with the doors open.
My sister Clodagh, by then a student at Trinity College Dublin, propped up a book of English literature on top of the churn. The handle turned slower and slower, as the pages turned faster and faster.
“Ah, come on, will you ever get the butter to come?”
Finally, the pressure eased, the sloshing stopped, and the cream was now butter. The whey was run off, now buttermilk, often drunk straight or used for soda bread making.
Three times the butter was washed with spring water. Extra buckets were brought from the well by Micky on butter making days.
The lump of butter was tipped onto a wet sycamore board and worked with wooden butter hands until all the whey was squeezed out. Salt was then added to taste; then it was weighed and wrapped in the new butter paper.
The product was ready to go – country butter to the town – in exchange for tea and sugar at Spearman’s Grocery, Cashel.