One of the joys of cabin life many moons ago was churning our own butter.
The series of Foxfire books was all the rage back when my pal, Hog Ears, and I lived in our backwoods bachelor cabin. Foxfire books tell you how to build your own smoke house, raise chickens, make a dulcimer and other back-to-the-land kinds of things.
Among the tattered pages of a Foxfire volume, Hog Ears spied an article about churning butter, minus the churn. All that's needed, the story said, is some cream and a big glass jar with a lid.
It was winter. Hog Ears and I had time on our hands.
We'd been laid off from our jobs at Table Rock State Park until spring. To hide our disappointment, we pretty much danced on the kitchen table and went fishing or hunting every day to celebrate.
Occasionally, we'd leave to get supplies like nightcrawlers or milk. It was a four-mile, dirt-road drive from our cabin to the pavement, then a little more to the farm where Mrs. Lowry lived.
She and her husband, Mr. Lowry (we never asked their first names), had a half-dozen dairy cows mooing around their place. About once a week we'd visit and she'd sell us a gallon of ice-cold milk right out of the cow.
Mrs. Lowry always wore an apron when she answered the door. We'd say howdy, and she'd ask how we boys were doing. Then she'd shuffle off to the kitchen and return with our one-gallon glass jar of milk. I think it cost a buck a gallon, but there was a catch. You had to bring the jar back each time, otherwise no milk for you.
This fresh, unpasteurized milk had sort of a yellowish tint and about 2 inches of cream on the top. You could float a quarter on that cream, it was so thick. A frosty glass of that milk and you were in dairy heaven.
We were due to visit Mrs. Lowry the day after Hog Ears read about glass-jar butter churning in Foxfire. When we brought our cold milk home to the cabin, Hog Ears skimmed the cream off the top, poured it into another glass jar and closed the lid tight.
All you had to do was keep shaking the jar and pretty soon you'd have butter, so the article said.
Being unemployed, we had all day to shake, shake that thing. Oh, we were so cool, churning our own butter at our cabin out in the woods. Made me want to go outside and 'rassle a bear.
After shaking that jar until our arms ached, a miracle happened. The cream started to congeal. It got thicker and thicker. Pretty soon we had butter.
It was white, not yellow like store-bought butter. There was some liquid residue in the jar that got poured down the sink.
Hog Ears spread the home-made butter over two slices of bread and we took a taste. It was awful.
We tossed the whole mess out into the yard. Our butter was so gross even Hog Ears' dog, Chili Dog, wouldn't eat it.
Some say that if we all grew our own food, people would eat a lot less. That'd sure be true if people made their own butter.
Flip Putthoff can be reached at [email protected].
Sports on 03/19/2019