Qualla
The old-fashioned butter churn is about a thing of the past. So are butter molds and butter prints and butter paddles. Few folks make their own butter and any more, and most of them use an electric churn.
An exception is Mrs. George Sherrill who lives here in the hills above Whittier. She still keeps a family cow, does her own milking, and churns by hand.
“I wouldn’t give you two cents for all the electric churns that’s ever been made,” she said. “The buttermilk ain’t no account. All the whey goes to the bottom and the milk comes to the top. The butter don’t set right. Makes it too hot or something. I used a wooden churn up until about 25 years ago. When we were moving from Barkers Creek I had to store my churn and my spinning wheel for a while and they both disappeared. Then George got me a crock and made me a wooden dasher. I’ve been using it ever since.”
“No, I don’t think there’s much difference in buttermilk or butter churned out of a crock and out of a wooden churn. But there’s a difference when it comes from an electric churn.”
“That wooden churn I had was the kind all the old folks use. I used to print my butter too. But a while back I give my molds to my daughter. She wanted them. So I just put my butter in plastic cups now.”
“I’ve been milking a cow and churning all my life. Started milking when I was four years old, and I wasn’t much older when I took to churning. We’ve always kept a cow. George has to have his own buttermilk and his own butter.”
—John Parris – Mountain Cooking
I’ve never milked a cow nor churned butter. I sure would like to do both. Carolyn Anderson taught me to make butter from store bought whipping cream. It is really good, but I know it’s not as good as fresh butter churned from cow’s milk like Mrs. Sherill made. If you’d like to see how Carolyn makes butter go here.
Last night’s video: I WILL NOT be in Ringgold; We Live in a Holler; & Punching Time Clocks.
Tipper
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My grandparents bought a milk cow, which they didn’t have for years on The Farm, after I, the first grandchild was born. We grandchildren went to the barn with Granddaddy to milk. Practice made perfect! Grandmother churned and made butter. My brother has the butter mold and I have the milk churn crock and the pottery milk pitcher. I cherish them as they are reminders of a simpler time and of my favorite childhood memories as a city kid from Atlanta on The Farm.
I can remember my mother’s mother we all called Granny gathering up the cream off the top of the fresh milk. Placing it in the churn with the dasher she would tie an old rag around the hole where the dasher pierced the top of the lid of the churn. This was to prevent splatters. She pulled up her old ladder back chair and start her rhythmic strokes with the dasher. This was a lengthy process. I remember only a few words of the “charm” she would chant during the process. “Come butter come…” that’s all I can recall as I was just a young girl of 5-6. I would love to know the rest of the diddy. After she was satisfied with what was in the churn, she would dip or pour it up in another bowl and gather the solids and pour off the buttermilk in a stoneware pitcher for later use. The butter would be rinsed in icy cold water and worked with a paddle to remove all of the liquid milk from the solids. Then it was salted and placed in a rectangular butter mold to set up. Good memories…..,
I’m surprised nobody asked what Qualla was being as it was the first word in todays post.
I look at the picture of the lady churning the butter, and think of my Grandmother Kirby, she would sit in a straight back , cane bottom chair close to a small flat top two eye coal stove and churn her butter with a wood handle dasher just like the lady in the picture -up and down from what I remember. She also had an old wood cook store like in the picture, look close at the feet, this is just a stand for the stove to fit into. I have a stand from one of Grandmother’s wood cook stoves that I have put put planks on it and sit flower pots on. Daddy had several of the cast iron kettles like the one sitting on the eye of the cook stove. Grandmother would often times cook Grandaddy and her meals on the two eye stove during the winter months.
My mother saved the cream off the top of the milk to make butter. She would put some in pint jars for us to shake. We were so proud that we were ‘helping’ . The buttermilk tasted much better back then.
Never forgot how good my Grandma’s churned butter was and the milk too. I never milked the cow but was with her when she did, I was about 6yrs. old.
I would go wild strawberry picking with her too, after we picked them, got them home and washed them we would have us a bowl of those small wild strawberries(that taste so much better then domestic strawberrys)with fresh cold cream and or milk from the cow that morning with some sugar mixed in… sooo good! on a hot summer afternoon. I make butter today using store bought heavy whipping cream and a handheld mixer;the butter’s flavor is good but not as good as fresh cow’s milk butter.
I will add a tip for health here… the old timers would drop a silver dime in the cow’s milk to kill the dangerous bacteria that sometimes is in raw cow’s milk(something some folks may not know is that a
Abraham Lincoln’s mother died from drinking bad bacteria in the milk)… the dime was 99.99 sterling silver.
I suppose using a few drops of the sovereign brand colloidal silver maybe might work the same results(one has to do their own research on that and make their own decisions about using it for themselves)as their dime.
I have found fresh cows milk at health food stores that had been pasteurized to 156° so as to kill the bad bacteria but not the good nutrients in fresh cows milk… it was sold in glass jugs that could be returned to the store to receive money back for them.
I miss this because I moved and no one does this in my area. I did see in online news that some Mennonite stores in Appalachia sell those same jugs of milk processed the same… so someday when I decide to go on a weekend jaunt… gonna get me some of that milk for sure lol, and I recall it had a lot of heavy cream on top… yep, tastes just like Grandma’s too! only thing was I just could get my hands on any wild strawberries to put in that cream! lol
Brought back a lot of old memories of the spent with my grandma on her big old farm doing chores etc etc.
My mother made and sold butter for many years. Her butter was made from milk that had been allowed to cool and the cream to separate. The cream was skimmed off and the remainder was the milk we drank. The cream was set aside and allowed to turn (ferment, sour, culture, among other terms) into a product resembling yogurt. It was then poured into a 5 gallon stoneware “churn jar” with a wooden “dasher” on a wooded rod which protruded through a hole in the wooden lid atop the vessel. She agitated the soured cream by pushing and pulling the dasher up and down inside the jar. This action caused the butterfat in the soured cream to clump together and sooner or later she had the first stage of her butter.
She would dip the infant butter out of the churn jar into a bowl then use the back of her spoon to work the liquid out of solidifying mass. When she had gotten all she could out with the spoon she would take it to the sink and knead it in cold water until the water in the bowl no longer had even a tint of white in it. After the rinsing she squeeze it until no more water would come out then she packed the butter into wooden molds. The molds containing the butter was set into the refrigerator until it further solidified enough to maintain its shape when it was unmolded. The pusher that removed the butter from the mold had a flower design engraved into it which left an embossed flower in top of the pound of butter.
That was fermented (cultured) butter. The culturing process added a taste that cannot be found in sweet cream butter which is mostly what we find in stores today. Even cultured butter found in stores cannot compare. It has been made from pasteurized milk which destroys the natural bacteria from the cow and from the natural environment where it was milked and handled. The bacteria that’s then added to the mixture of cream from many different cows is the choice of the dairyman. The taste is much better that sweet cream butter but cannot even come close to home cultured butter.
The liquid left in the churn jar after the butter has been dipped out is real buttermilk. It will have a taste unique to the farm on which it was produced as will the butter that came from it. Real buttermilk has no butter, since it has been removed. It is also lower in sugar as the bacteria has turned it into lactic acid hence the tangy taste and sometimes effervescent mouth feel.
I suppose if you have never experienced it you can’t miss it and I’m sorry for that. I guess I am the sad one for having experienced it in my young life and realizing I can never have it again.
I came along after my family had moved to town and sold the cow. Mama still had her ceramic churn, dasher, paddle and butter molds though. We used the churn for an umbrella stand until some exuberant young miscreant, who shall be nameless, dropped a heavy golf umbrella in it with too much force and broke out the bottom
My grandparents always had hand in their refrigerator hand-churned butter and buttermilk that was made by my granddaddy’s aunt (my great-great aunt). They also had eggs that came from Aunt Maude’s chickens. Aunt Maude lived into her 90’s, and until her passing, she kept and milked several cows, she also planted a big garden every spring. Aunt Maude made bread and the best pound cake you ever tasted. People came from several adjoining counties and communities to buy her freshly-made butter, buttermilk and freshly-gathered eggs. Aunt Maude killed several hogs every fall and smoked the meat in her own smokehouse—she also made her own lard. Aunt Maude also made fresh bread and pound cakes to order. Aunt Maude was the hardest working woman I ever knew. I was in my early 30’s when Aunt Maude died—I am 69 now. I have never tasted butter as good as the butter made by my great-great Aunt Maude—her buttermilk and lard made the best biscuits and cornbread you ever tasted. This precious woman also made jams, jellies, preserves and sweet pickles—all SO GOOD. I am so thankful I was able to witness all that Aunt Maude did to make life so good for herself and so many others!!! Not many know how to make homemade goodness anymore—it’s too much work and trouble for most people—if most of us had to work hard to raise animals and vegetables for food we would be in big trouble!!!
One unusual thing I noticed in the comments was the practice of making butter with fresh whipping cream. I know it is very delicious made that way, but the way I remember it being made was from a curd. The fresh milk was set aside in a warm place until it formed a large curd, which did not smell bad, and then churned. When you were checking to see if it was ready you leaned the churn over a little and the whole thing would sort of “plop” over, and you knew it was time. What was left after churning and removing the butter – was buttermilk. I don’t think churning fresh cream would yield buttermilk. I miss having fresh milk.
Paula- I remember the way you do about how our butter was made. Mom would leave it until the cream went to the top and then churn it. I remember watching her “squeeze” every last drop of milk out of her mound of butter—going over it and over it with a wooden paddle or wooden spoon—pressing firmly until she had it perfect. She loved the buttermilk that was left and still does. I love it for baking but not to drink.
I’ve milked the cows and churned the butter but not in the last 60 plus years. Grandma had a wooden churn. the dasher handle was the size of a broom handle and the dasher was a cross like you put under a Christmas tree with holes in each side. Mom had a crock with the same type dasher until the crock got broken. After that we used a gallon jar and either shook it or rolled it to and fro until the butter ‘came’.
I used to sit on the sofa with a book in one hand while rolling the jar with the other. Sometimes I sat on the bed doing the same while trying to get my brother or a younger sister to take a nap.
I was raised in 1950s on an Eastern PA dairy farm with about 50 milking head. And for years my 4H project was a flock of about 30 laying hens whose eggs I sold to neighbors, my teachers and members of our Quaker Meeting. Back before climate change, we used to get at least a couple of big snow storms each winter that snowed us in. We were on a dirt road a mile from the highway and had very low priority for the Township’s snow plow. So then the dairy’s truck couldn’t get in to pick up our milk. We used to store and deliver milk in 10 gallon cans, but we didn’t have many extras, so when snowed in, we’d have to dump extra milk down the back lane. But beforehand, we’d start hand churning butter in an old wood churn similar to the one pictured in the article. We could easily keep the butter long enough to use ourselves or I’d sell it to the customers for my egg route. This was hard work and took a lot of time, so all who could were asked to help. Eventually, we got a refrigerated bulk tank with extra capacity to store our milk and the Township improved its snow removal. Thereafter, we kept a bunch of the old 10 gallon cans along with that wood churn stored in an attic space above the milk house. There they all gathered dust for many years until the suburbs invaded. Of the Township’s 150 working farms in 1950, only 2 remain today. The long views across miles of rolling fields that we used enjoy are now gone, hidden by housing developments adorned now with mature trees. The dusty old one-lane dirt roads too are gone along with their high road banks that supplied summer employment for men from the County poorhouse who we’d see with long scythes cutting tall grass and weeds.
I’ve never fully milked a cow, just tried it one time at a farm or a fair, it’s been so long ago I really not sure which. I just remember it was way harder to get the milk out than farmers make it look. I guess it’s because they have done it for years and just know the right way to pull then squeeze. I don’t remember getting anything when I tried, but it was back in my youth when I tried. I’ve seen a wooden churn, but never used one.
We kept a milk cow when I was young back in the 50’s and 60’s. We had a hand crank churn and a butter mold that had a flower design in it. I still have both. I’ve only used them in recent years just to show my kids and grandkids how to do it. Milking a cow twice a day is a real commitment, We don’t use enough milk and butter to justify it.
I remember my mammaw churning butter. I loved to hear her sing the Come butter Come song while she was churning . I really miss learning the lessons my grand parents taught.
Mom has my grandmother’s glass churn, the kind with the paddles and a crank handle attached to the lid. I’ve never used it, but I have made butter by shaking heavy cream in a Mason jar. Real butter tastes so much better than margarine in any form.
When my family and I lived in Ky before moving to Ohio, I remember my grandmother churning butter. The churn and paddle were wooden. I remember asking Mamaw to let me churn butter. I was about four years old. I remember it was hard to lift the paddle and I soon gave it back to her. I also remember she strained the butter using cheesecloth. We returned once or twice a year to Ky when we moved to Ohio, and I remember an uncle and aunt who had eight children. I always stayed with them when we visited because they had four boys & four girls, one of them my age. My aunt would get up in the early morning, milk the cow and churn to make butter. She put the final results in a large bowl and set it on the table with a feast of gravy, biscuits, eggs, boxes of cereal, sometimes pork chops from a hog they had butchered and sometimes chicken. I forget what else she had but I remembered the butter tasted out of this world on hot biscuits with her honey (they had bee hives) and or homemade jam. I don’t know what happened to the churn, I would have liked to have it.
My Grandmothers both had milk cows at one time or another in their lives and certainly knew how to churn butter and so did my parents:) I still have an old churn with dasher from them and I treasure it. My Great-grandfather Kennedy had his own shop of making crocks, churns, pitchers, and jugs. He had learned how to turn from his family and taught it to his grandsons with one being my father.
Oh my, Matt is really doing a lot and it all looks so nice. I love all the beautiful cabinets and the kitchen floor!!
I have a churn like the one in the picture but I don’t recall where I got it. Now all I need is some fresh milk that is nearly impossible to find. The butter Mom churned was snow white and not yellow like the churned butter they sell in the stores. When I visited my hometown in the 70s, I remember buying tubs of homemade butter from a lady to take back up north. She only charged 25 cents for cereal bowl size tub she carefully wrapped in wax paper.
My Grandma had both a crock churn with a wooden dasher and an electric churn. She could use the manuel version on the porch and the electric in the kitchen. I have helped churn using the wooden dasher. Feeding the animals, milking the cow, staining the milk and starting the churn were just some of her chores before breakfast. Dad built her a house by us and when she moved that ended keeping a cow but did not end having a big garden.
You’re real folks doing some real living. My Mom and Dad came out of West Virginia and they knew how to live too. We’re “city farmers,” try hard, but mostly know we’re “entertainment” for the real farmers: “Paul, you plow in rows, not circles,” then he comes and helps me take the plow off the tractor and get it out of the fence…
I shared a short while back about using all-purpose flour and non-aluminum baking powder and why I don’t buy self-rising flour. Well, after your breakfast post and mentioning White Lily, I finally got to Food City yesterday and their bleached self-rising flour does have aluminum in it (as a heating agent I think), but their UNBLEACHED self-rising flour even “advertises” right on the front of the packaging that it has “non-aluminum baking powder.” There must be a lot of people paying attention for them to put that on the front of the packaging; I caught it from my wife (correlation between aluminum and Alzheimer’s). And they’re still 5 pound bags which fit right in the canister. A lot of brands went to 4# to keep the price the same. Some of those kinds of adjustments mess up recipes; right? THANKS for another hint that helps! You have been a daily blessing. Oh yeah, I’d love to make biscuits with “real” butter.
Tipper, I spent my summers with my grandparents in North Alabama. My Granny didn’t put up with idle hands so I had to milk the cow, strain the milk in cheese cloth, and then churn the butter. Dodging the cows tail while you milk is a challenge. The worst part was the barn was never cleaned out so we wore rubber boots to walk through the manure. The smell was AWFUL! I have what my family has always called a super sniffer nose so it was the worst thing on the farm. We also picked cotton. My Granny had 17 grandchildren and I am the oldest. It was my job to keep track of all the grandchildren who were out in the field with us. The number varied from day to day so it was a challenge to remember how many went into the cotton patch with us AND make sure that number was there when we left. One day the was a copperhead snake in front of us and my Granny calmly picked up her hoe and chopped its head off! I was never crazy about picking cotton after that. I learned to ride Granny’s old horse, Maud, and learned about how to can and put up vegetables. I have small hands so I mostly was put to washing the canning jars.
The only place you’ll see a butter churn these days is in a antique shop, as antiquers have brought all the old milk churns up over the years.
Everyone needs to milk a cow once in their life. Would give you an appreciation for the final product. Getting cow kicked ( side kicked) or smacked in the face with the cow’s tail early in the morning is always an eye opener.
My 13 year old has been helping milk cows since she was six years old. Her babysitter is a dairy farmer. She started out in the barn holding the cow’s tail so the babysitter wouldn’t get hit while cleaning the udders, hand milking to get the milk flowing, and then hooking up the milkers. Now she works there for money doing the actual milking. This past week, she did her FFA Speech on milk production. She started her speech talking about her first job as a milked was holding the tail. Then at her closing she said that although there are many factors that can help with milk production, she personally thought it was all in the way you held the tail! Haha!!! Your message about the cow tail made me have to share.
I can remember my granny churning butter and rocking a grand baby in her lap at the same time on the front porch. I guess she was very good at multi-tasking.
You know what is richer than the butter in Mrs. Sherrill’s churn? The fact that I can go to my family tree and find the very lady whose hand is on that dasher. Her name was Etta Lee Ward Sherrill.
My grandmother had cows and sold milk and butter before my time. After the cows went, she bought milk and made butter to sell. She had an electric churn. I remember the wood molds with carved designs that she packed the butter into. I still have her butter paddle. Everything else is gone.
My grandmother, born in the late 1800s, made her own butter. I was very young when she stopped making it, but I remember it was round instead of sticks and had the prettiest picture on top. it also tasted way different from the margarine we used at home. I’ve been buying real butter for about the last 15 years or so and I love the way it tastes and I think it is so much healthier than margarine. We quit using that when I learned that there is only one molecule of difference between margarine and plastic. ..ewww. Great post today. Thanks for sharing. How is precious Granny getting along? Praying for y’all, Jane
Jane-thank you! Granny is doing good 🙂
In commercial making of margarine and butter the “stick” is referred to as a print. I never understood the origin of the term until I read todays story. thanks!
My granny Parris lived near the head of Conleys Creek in Swain County. The kitchen in the photo reminds me very much of her kitchen. When I was about 8 or so, visiting one Sunday, she mentioned needing to make butter but didn’t want to do it on Sunday. I wanted to help and learn how to churn, so she set up the churn and showed me what to do. I heard her quietly say, “churn on Sunday, mash your finger on Monday.” I just laughed at her little ditty. On Monday, I was leaning against the wall in a straight chair, reading, and the back of the chair slipped forward away from the wall and I slid to the floor with it. In trying to protect my self, my hands slid down the wall and one of my fingers was pushed between the baseboard and the wall. I wailed and my mom laughed as she repeated “churn on Sunday, mash your finger on Monday.”
Only time I ever milked a cow was at the North Carolina State Fair. I think it’s a fundraising thing for the veterinary school. You pay a small fee and get a little carton of milk afterwards. Not sure if they’ve brought it back since the pandemic. The teats are so soft and warm.
We have made butter with whipping cream in the kitchen aid a few times. I’ve never had hand churned butter I’m sure it’s heavenly.
Tipper.
I remember my Mother churning with a hand churn.
The thing I remember most about the hand churn was the cloth Mom would wrap around dasher handle where it went through the cover to keep milk from accumulating around the hole in the cover.
We were “uptown” when we got our electric churn! The electric one was much more convenient, as I remember, was much faster in getting the job done.
I actually have a small wooden butter churn. I don’t remember where it came from, but I used it every Thanksgiving for years. with store bought whipping cream.
I remember my Aunt Minnie Mauney Teague getting the first electric churn in our neighborhood at Ivy Log. All the women were over to see it make butter!
When I was young we had a milk cow and I just loved it because we had all the milk we wanted to drink…and I loved milk. I was taught to milk the cow, but dad usually did it. My mama made butter using a crock with a wooden paddle. It was the best butter. Sometimes, when she needed butter, she would give us kids a quart jar full of milk and we would take turns shaking and shaking the jar—passing it around when our arms got tired—until the butter came to the top. Then mama would finish it. We also made homemade ice cream with wild strawberries in it in the summer. Now that was a real treat! Later, when we didn’t have a milk cow, we would drive a couple miles up the road to a small farm and buy fresh milk from this older couple. Great memories!
I remember turning the wheel of butter churn years ago. It was a 1 gallon glass container with a hand crank much like an ice cream churn. It had a wooden paddle with holes in it and when finished, my Mother would ‘wash’ the butter with the water being cool from the faucet. I had never seen the churn you are showing, but it looks more difficult. You also can make butter with the heavy cream in a food processor. I am sure there is more than one ‘you tuber’ that has different methods. Tell Matt that both of us enjoy and admire this ‘counter topping’. Praying for Granny and you guys.
Glenda, look up item number 1241015 at Lehman.com and see if this is similar to churn you used. They are have a churn made like the one my Grandmother used.
I have milked a cow as my next door neighbor had a milk cow. I have never churned butter. However. some 4H girls had a stand at our State fair, where they would invite you to put a little cream in a plastic small plastic container and shake it for about 5 minutes. Surprise! The butter tasted so good
I remember my grandmother churning butter. She didn’t use a wooden churn but had a “ceramic “ churn with a wooden dasher. They might not be the correct word. My sister now has grandmother’s churn. Daddy had a small collection of butter molds. I also remember when my grandparents sold their milk cow and watching the men load her into the back of a pickup truck with cattle bodies on it. Funny my son was telling me last night of watching a video of a man rigging up something using with a reciprocating saw and making a small amount butter with it. Lehman’s of Ohio sells small manual butter churns but nothing like the old ones I remember.