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Most farms and some townspeople kept a cow to provide their household with milk and its by-products of cream and butter. Making butter was a manual and time consuming task. It involved equipment used to separate the cream from milk and then churn it into butter. It was a domestic duty mostly carried out by the lady of the house, often with assistance from the children.
Below: Daisy Bowman milking a cow and two cows feeding, on Home Farm in Carnamah
Above: Milk Drum, also known as a pail or bucket
The fresh milk was poured through a milk strainer to remove any hair or dust that may have fallen in during milking. Milk strainers, like the one shown below, were often made to screw onto large metal cans.
Left & Above: Milk Separator and Milk Strainer
Milk separators were used to separate the milk into cream and skimmed milk. Fresh milk was poured into the large bowl at the top and the handle manually turned. This once new technology was called centrifugal separation.
The milk would go down from the bowl and into a spinning mechanism that would result in the heavier milk particles being pulled outwards while the lighter cream particles would gather in the middle. The cream and skimmed milk would then come out of separate spouts.
The ratio of skimmed milk to cream would depend on the speed the handle was turned, the cow the milk had come from, the weather and what the cow had been eating!
Right & Below: Butter Churns used in Carnamah
Following separation butter churns were used to churn the cream into butter. Cream was added to the churns and turning the handle would move a paddle inside. Water and salt was added at certain intervals.
bloody handle for hours"
Vida E. Whitehurst (née Wells) speaking about herself and her sister churning butter as children in Carnamah in the 1930s.
Butter pats were used to remove the butter from the churn and press it into a solid rectangular shape. In some instances, especially if it was for sale, the pats would instead be used to push the butter into moulds.
Right: Pair of Wooden Butter Pats
Sometimes more butter than what the home required was made with the excess being sold to increase the household income. The printing office of the local newspaper in Carnamah manufactured specialised butter wrappers for this purpose.
Left: Butter Wrappers
These wrappers were printed in Carnamah at The North Midland Times newspaper office for Mrs Ivy G. Allen of Mi Blu Aven Farm in Winchester.
Above: Miss Margaret N. D. Clark
of Rosebury Row Farm in Carnamah with a calf
drinking milk from a bucket.
Local Cows!
In the early years numerous townspeople kept cows in Carnamah. Some had them on vacant blocks in town and others kept them in farmers’ paddocks. Among the exceptions was Bonny, the cow of local baker A. Leslie Trotter, who wandered freely around town. Her death made it into the columns of the regional newspaper The Irwin Index.
Above: Cow Bell
The noise form the bell, hung around the neck, made it easier to find the cow. This assisted when it was time for milking and also if the cow had been let into unfenced bush to graze freely.
Saturday
21 May 1927
"Bonny," Carnamah's well known cow, the property of Mr A. L. Trotter, died of inflammation on Monday evening last. Bonny's placid gait and amicable aspect made her a familiar figure to the people of Carnamah as she wandered peacefully around the town. So well-known did Bonny become that she almost became an institution, and when she died the people of Carnamah discussed her going with almost as much regret as a human.
Above: Advertisement for Mrs Sharp's dairy in 1932
Mrs Agnes S. Sharp, whose husband had died in 1925 leaving her with two infant children, farmed Yarrow Farm in Carnamah. She had previously run a diary in Scotland and by 1932 she was operating a dairy from her farm in Carnamah. For many years she delivered milk to customers in the Carnamah townsite.
Left: Advert in early 1936 for the sale of Kroschel's Dairy
Charlie Kroschel ran a tearooms at 10 Macpherson Street in Carnamah (now the Carnamah Museum). After leasing out the tearooms in mid 1935 he ran a small dairy for six months. His dairy was located just west of town.
Right: Cream Can
This cream can was used by Mrs Kate McIntosh of Carnamah to send cream to Perth, which supplemented her income. The latches on each side rise over the thin part at the top to keep the lid firmly in place.
"May milks two cows, so we have plenty of butter, and of course we keep fowls for home use. We have breakfast at half past six in the morning. May gets up first and gets started, I get up to make the toast, after that between milking, separating, and washing up the time passes very quickly. We have dinner at half-past six, luncheon is carried out, by the time all the washing up is done we are ready for bed, but there is no doubt it is a fine healthy life."
Above: Ready Made Farm settler Mrs Mary Lang of Grianaig Farm, Carnamah writing about herself and her daughter May, in a letter to her brother in Canada in 1931.
Left: Notice from The North Midland Times
During the Second World War there were shortages in many commodities, and butter was rationed across Australia from mid 1943. The rationing applied to everyone who bought and sold butter - including farmers who sold, gave away or traded small amounts.
This impacted on people more than it would today, as butter wasn't just a spread for sandwiches and toast. Most households prepared the majority of their food from scratch and butter was used extensively in cooking, baking and for frying. It was also in a time when alternatives such as margarine weren't available.
V i r t u a l M u s e u m : Macpherson Family | Ready Made Farms | Milk, Cream & Butter | More Coming Soon!