When I was in my early teens, Dad got to thinking that I should get a break from my chores once a week or so. So he made an arrangement with our neighbor, Wes, that every Saturday, starting at 5:30 AM [read: before daybreak], Wes would drive up in his old single-axle, wood-slatted, ten tire truck, and we would make the rounds of neighboring dairy farmers. Dad thought this diversion would broaden my horizons; I thought, at five o’clock each Saturday morning, the whole idea stunk on ice. But Wes did it 7 days a week to supplement his income, so who was I to complain?
Wes’ truck was full of empty milk cans variously identified with numbers. So, when we got to the first farm, and he might be ‘Number 14,’ I would pull all the empty No. 14 cans off the truck, help Wes load full cans onboard. This method of numbering, though simple, was quite effective in calculating the amount of money due each farmer based on his percentage of the load sold the previous day at the creamery. Wes would pay the farmer for yesterday’s haul, and we would go off to the next farm, and so on until we were full.
At each farm, before driving off, Wes would stop to jawbone with the farmer. I was thirteen-years-old, and – call me selfish – I didn’t much care about the season’s prospects for a good hay harvest, nor the price of grains. I just wanted my pay for the day.
Then off to the creamery where the milk was pasteurized and various processes begun depending on which dairy end-products were desired: butter, skim milk, and the like. Then, we would stop at a diner and I would get a free milkshake from Wes, my ‘pay’ for the morning. It cost a quarter. Even then, I knew I’d never get rich this way!
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was living in a transition in dairy-farm technology. For generations, the daily routine was the same. It began at three or four o’clock in the morning. [For years, I wondered why the cows and farmers didn’t reach a comity that would allow them both to sleep in until, say, nine-ish and begin the day at a more civilized hour. I found few takers for reasons, then as now, I could not fathom.]
In those cool, dark hours udders would be washed, the cows would be milked by hand [which is quite an art-form], barn-cats would get the occasional squirt of milk which they relished, the milk pails were emptied into milk cans, and they would be stored in milk-sheds. [More on that directly.]
Early in the 19th century, milk was delivered directly from farm to residence in cans drawn by wagon. The customer would purchase the volume they required, and said volume would be ladled from the can on the street. Obviously, the lack of portable refrigeration bought with it a certain risk.
Over time, creameries gradually cropped up, and farmers found it economical to hire someone like Wes to drive a farm circuit and pick up their product. It allowed the dairy-man to keep working, rather than undertake the long drive to the pasteurizing plant. Paying a route man was ultimately an economy to the farmer.
This persisted into the 1960’s. I noticed we by-passed some larger farms. Wes said, “Those farmers have big, cooled holding tanks on site. Those storage units cool and gently agitate the milk. A different kind of truck, a tanker, picks up their milk.” And that was the technical evolution which gradually displaced Wes and his kind.
Like I said, after the milk was poured into milk cans on the farm, the cans themselves were put in a milk house. The first milk house is recorded as built in 1583.
They were often, at least on small farms, not much bigger than an outdoor privy.
Sawdust formed the insulation, and did rather well. Often these buildings were built over a small, free-flowing creek, a design in the foundation allowed the water to flow through making for a uniform cooling, and the cans were supported upright by a lattice-work of re-bar-type material.
I can still see Wes leaning against the fender of his truck, and asking the fortieth farmer in a row, ‘So what do you think about grain prices?” Yunno, a kid works himself to a shadow; all he wants is a milkshake by way of saying ‘Thankee.”
But, Oh no! We’ve got to talk about the cost of oats!
Look for Lucky’s books locally and on-line: The Oath of Hippocrates; The Cotillian; A Journey Long Delayed; Campfire Tales; Sabonics.
