Fresh butter melting on hot homemade bread… Isn’t that the homesteader’s dream? A cheap two-gallon stock pot from the local chain store got me started in churn building. It was thin stainless steel and cost less than ten bucks. I carted it home wondering what I might find in my junk pile to run the thing. I found an old squirrel cage fan and pulled the little motor to test it. I figure that if it could turn a six-inch fan, it could turn a two-inch impeller.

On many farms where butter is made for home use it is desirable to put away some of the surplus summer butter to use during the late fall and winter when production is sometimes not sufficient for the family needs. Many farmers, after using special care in making summer butter that they think will keep well, have put it away only to find a few months later that it has become strong and rancid. This experience is not confined to farm butter. The city dealer in creamery butter has had the same experience even when he stored it in a good cold-storage warehouse. Experimental work in the United States Department of Agriculture a number of years ago showed that the sourness of the cream greatly influenced the keeping quality of the butter and that butter of the best keeping quality was made from perfectly sweet Pasteurized cream.

To me, the raw versus pasteurized milk debate is easily settled in my mind. If I am going to drink milk from a cow with a number, lined up in her place in an industrial dairy, you’d better believe I want that milk pasteurized. For most of my life I drank milk from a cow with a name. When you only have a handful of cows, if that many, you do notice when something isn’t right. No one in their right mind knowingly drinks milk from a sick cow. I have never gotten sick drinking raw milk or personally known anyone else who did. I have every confidence in the farmer selling the same milk he or she brings to their own table.

Finding an old butter churn at a flea market, one that is still usable can be a lot of fun, and because there are so many types, it’s good to know a few tips to help you find one that works well for you. For one thing, the size of your butter churn must match your cream supply so that your valuable cream gets transformed into golden butter while it’s fresh and sweet, and that your valuable time is not eaten up by churning batch after batch because your churn is too small.