The Dairy.

THE DAIRY.
Just below Whitehall Farmhouse was the Dairy, flagstone shelved, cement floored, cool. One door, one small window facing North away from the sun, one equally small to the west, both covered with a perforated fly-proof zinc screen for obvious reasons. In the dairy were the many different utensils required for the different tasks done therein. But first to the byre to milk the cows by hand, early morning and late afternoon, the milkers sitting on the left side of the cows on either a three legged or four legged stool according to preference, stools made on the farm by Pat Shearer, long retired but a rare touch with wood. Head against the left flank of the cow, nestled close but with a cap or beret or headscarf on the head of some kind, kept hair clean and free of cattle lice and a cap kept solely for the milking. Often they tied the cow’s tail to her leg with a short length of string to save the milker from a tail-slap as they called it. Hands moved like lightning as each udder was emptied, then on to the next cow, the milk foaming into the bucket, and, still warm, we sometimes had a drink. Conversely, or perversely, the milkers would on occasion send a stream of milk our way with remarkable accuracy. Or into the open mouth of one special cat who had learned the trick. Then the milk into the covered tin pails set safely against the back wall of the byre and on to the next cow. When finished all the pails from about ten cows was taken across to the dairy. First was to strain it through a large fine mesh strainer to remove any accidental bits of chaff or straw, or whatever!. Then some poured into enamel or earthenware crockery basins for house use, some into tin cans for each of the farm workers, some into the large steel churns for the Whitehall Village milk run, and the balance into the red Alfa Laval separator with a big commodious bowl on top. Inside the separator was a vertical stack of thin steel disks with small holes, each fitted in its own place. By using more or less discs the thickness of the cream could be adjusted. The separator handle took quite a time to get up to speed when it reached a musical note, quite high pitched, singing we called it. Only then was the tap opened and milk allowed to flow, and the magic of cream out of one spout and separated milk out of the other. We often turned the handle but it was a surprisingly heavy task for small boys and we soon wearied. The milk in the basins, if left a while, say overnight, had a layer of risen cream on the surface came morning. That was the way in which we got cream previous to the separator days and a skimmer was used, a shallow scoop with small perforations through which milk would flow but not the cream. Time consuming, but practice made perfect. It was fascinating to watch those skilled in the art but who had no separator. Hence we still use the phrase “skimmed milk” or “to skim off the top”, though not many now know that the phrase began in the farm dairy with cream. The skimmed milk was usually fed to small piglets new weaned from their mother, but was drinkable if you wished, or used for baking, though too thin for those used to whole milk Today many would know no better as we drink “half-and-half” and all the other attenuated offerings under guise of “Healthier Milk”. Really??
Cream of course was the beginning of butter. Kept for a few days before churning as slightly mature and slightly soured cream made better and tastier butter, none of today’s fresh everything. In summer when the grass was green and the cows milked well there was surplus milk not available in winter. We had a very well made polished varnished wooden end-over-end barrel churn with small transparent glass windows to see if the butter was making, quite beautiful. The sound of the cream slopping and splashing within the churn actually changed note as the butter neared readiness so the churn could be stopped at just the right moment. A small quantity of cold water was then put in which further helped the butter granules to firm up, form and separate. We never tired of the magic of cream going in and butter coming out. Before the churn gave up its butter the buttermilk was drained off from a plug in the bottom of the churn into a large deep earthenware glazed bowl, a delicacy on a hot day straight out of the bowl with a dipper beside it, a smooth slightly sour sharp taste which I liked and have never lost. Used in the kitchen for baking too, again slightly soured was best.
Open the churn lid and take out the butter. Butter had it’s own work area, a long wooden trough with a serrated wooden roller which passed end to end and back again over the slab of new made butter. This squeezed surplus water or buttermilk out of the raw butter, sometimes mopped up with a muslin towel. The butter was then put on another wooden flat board or tray and made up into one pound slabs, each carefully weighed and meticulously squared between two wooden hand paddles with a diagonal pattern cut into the wood which decorated the finished slab. Wrapped then in thin greaseproof paper and stored on a cold flagstone shelf. No refrigeration then but water on the concrete floor provided a surprising amount of cooling by it’s evaporation. Butter for Farm House use of course, but any surplus was sold in the Village. Indeed even when we came to Caithness butter was made at Greenland Mains and taken to Thurso to Willie Oman and sold in his shop in Traill Street. Helped pay for the groceries. During the War a special treat for me at school in Inverness was a pound or two sent to Drummond Park Hostel, an all too short treasure while it lasted. I remember some being salted down in a crock for winter use, and pretty salt it was too. Nothing tasted better than new made farm house butter, and it is still a luxury when you can find it, but on the farm we were spoiled in that regard, especially during the rationing of the War years. And no mention of health or slimming or any other modern nonsense, butter was butter.
I find the list of Dairy work almost endless. We move on to cheese, farmhouse cheese. Summer brought surplus milk but none was ever wasted. What milk could not be sold, and when the herring moved South off Wick at season’s end in Stronsay the sales dropped severely, milk, still warm from the cow, had rennet stirred in, then left to set and the curds to form. Crisscross cut with a long flexible knife which better released the whey, tipped out onto the butter working tray to further drain under the roller. The whey was for the pigs, but again could be drunk as a thirst quencher. Quite sharp. Then the curds, crumbed with the fingers and salted to some degree, were put into muslin bags and hung to drain some more. The crumbed curds were then packed into cheese moulds of different sizes according to choice, large or small, lined with fine mesh cheese cloth and with a lid which went down into the mould, then placed into the cheese press. This was usually a fairly heavy freestone squared block with a screw to raise and lower it onto the cheese mould, and can still be seen outside the door of many old farm dairies. We still have one at Isauld but no longer working. Took several days to fully squeeze the new cheeses, stacked one on top of the other in the press. The finished cheeses were then turned out of their moulds and the outside rubbed over for a few days with salt, turned every day. They were eventually placed on a shelf to mature, a slow process which varied according to choice. Anything from a month to a year, with flavour according In Stronsay. We boys were fascinated by the different flavours of cheese in all the many farm houses we visited, all made from the same basic milk, but how such variety of different cheeses were made I do not know. Even a glass of milk at a different farm house could taste different.
And to finish every operation there was the daily washing and scrubbing and scalding with boiling water of every little bit of dairy furniture, no special soaps or detergents of today, just plain old fashioned hard work. They say it never did anyone any harm.