Sonja's father has rebuilt a sheepherder's wagon. I was delighted to see the fire shovel hanging by the little stove. (Sorry, you can only see part of it.) I'm sure that none of us were ever paddled with it - or not? Steve? I just remember scooping all the ashes that didn't fall into the ash box with it.
And then, there were the cream cans. Scooping out sour cream for the new crop of baby potatoes, or for raisin meringue pie or even for cream to churn for butter was all right, but I didn't like having to stir the sour cream - and remember the time that the cream can turned over in Grandpa's car. Mother scrubbed and scrubbed, and never quite got rid of the smell. However, having cream to sell to the creamery gave us extra cash money for things from the store like sugar and flour.
Sonja's father has rebuilt a sheepherder's wagon. I was delighted to see the fire shovel hanging by the little stove. (Sorry, you can only see part of it.) I'm sure that none of us were ever paddled with it - or not? Steve? I just remember scooping all the ashes that didn't fall into the ash box with it.
And then, there were the cream cans. Scooping out sour cream for the new crop of baby potatoes, or for raisin meringue pie or even for cream to churn for butter was all right, but I didn't like having to stir the sour cream - and remember the time that the cream can turned over in Grandpa's car. Mother scrubbed and scrubbed, and never quite got rid of the smell. However, having cream to sell to the creamery gave us extra cash money for things from the store like sugar and flour.
6 comments:
Fun memories. One of my vivid memories about the cream/milk cans comes from a time when Dad was building up his dairy herd, and before the days of the big stainless steel milk tank. He would keep the milk in the cans similar to the cream can in your picture and they were then set inside a large chest type cooler with a wench/pulley (or whatever it was called) system. Dad was very dependent on the milk truck to come and pick up those cans on a regular basis as there was no backup method to keep the milk cool if the cooler got full of cans. There was one particularly warm week when the cows were producing a lot of milk, the chest was full and the truck did not come. Unfortunately, it had broken down and would not be able to pick up the milk that day. Mother, in her amazing world of "waste not, want not", took the milk Dad couldn't keep in the cooler, poured it into a very well scoured large round tub, and began the process of making cheese out of the milk, rather than let it spoil. I don't know how she knew what the process was, but the end result was wonderful. That was the summer I learned about "squeeky" cheese.
Was that the reason Mother made that cheese..Oh, how I loved that and could never get enough. I remember that Mother rationed it....probably to keep us from getting a belly ache!
You were both too little to recall earlier cheese-making times in Penrose. Once, Mother and Dad put the copper boiler filled with milk on the stove, stoked the fire, and proceeded to work their magic. Retsyn was one essential ingredient that came from the store. Squeaky cheese was one of the by-products (we all begged for it, and I have never found any to equal the squeak on our teeth), but most of the cheese was put in presses with cheesecloth (hence the name), and squeezed so that the whey ran out, and then the cheese, still in the presses, was put to cure in the cellar. It formed a crust, but when we used the cheese, it was so delicious. Good memories of "provident living".
Elizabeth, you have lots of farm resources close to you. Make some cheese......please.....
Ah yes, that @#$%&& cream can. Grandpa and Grandma stopped by our place on their way to town to pick up our cream can. I was sent out to put it in the trunk of their green '39 Ford. The can tipped over on the way to town. I was blamed for the stink and the mess and the loss of the cream check which was depended on for necessities. No one thought to check to see if the can was put in where it wouldn't tip over. I suffered a lot of misery over this episode. I still suffer a lot of misery over it. The car stunk forever. Gene Christensen bought the car when Grandpa sold it. I rode up to Cody to paint the "C" into a "P" with Gene and then on up the canyon past the dam. The #%^@# car still stunk. Everyone was so mad at me and I was so wounded. Pathetic story.
Cache Valley "fresh" cheese is nicely squeaky as are the curds. Just mentioning.
Never, never go put a sour cream can in the trunk of a car. Never. Unless you want to feel bad the rest of your life.
And then the coal shovel. We awoke each morning in the frigid cold of our unheated bedrooms to the noise of Dad scraping the ashes out of the ash pit in the coal stoves that heated our home with the coal shovel in olden times before the new generation enjoyed heat and propane, thus leaving them less hardy and able to endure less than the older, more mature, colder, tougher, children.
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