are made up of Jerseys or Holsteins. Then the product that went to
market was butter, now it is milk. Then the butter was made on the farm
by the farmer's wife or the hired girl, now it is made in the creameries
by men. My mother made most of the butter for nearly forty years,
packing thousands of tubs and firkins of it in that time. The milk was
set in tin pans on a rack in the milk house for the cream to rise, and
as soon as the milk clabbered it was skimmed.

About three o'clock in the afternoon during the warm weather Mother
would begin skimming the milk, carrying it pan by pan to the big cream
pan, where with a quick movement of a case knife the cream was separated
from the sides of the pan, the pan tilted on the edge of the cream pan
and the heavy mantle of cream, in folds or flakes, slid off into the
receptacle and the thick milk emptied into pails to be carried to the
swill barrel for the hogs. I used to help Mother at times by handing her
the pans of milk from the rack and emptying the pails. Then came the
washing of the pans at the trough, at which I also often aided her by
standing the pans up to dry and sun on the big bench. Rows of drying tin
pans were always a noticeable feature about farmhouses in those days,
also the churning machine attached to the milk house and the sound of
the wheel, propelled by the "old churner"--either a big dog or a wether
sheep. Every summer morning by eight o'clock the old sheep or the old
dog was brought and tied to his task upon the big wheel. Sheep were
usually more unwilling churners than were the dogs. They rarely acquired
any sense of duty or obedience as a dog did. This endless walking and
getting nowhere very soon called forth vigorous protests. The churner
would pull back, brace himself, choke, and stop the machine: one churner
threw himself off and was choked to death before he was discovered. I
remember when the old hetchel from the day of flax dressing, fastened to
a board, did duty behind the old churner, spurring him up with its score