From Dairy to Doorstep
Milk Delivery in New England 1860 - 1960


Introduction

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“The dairy room and butter-making. This department of the farmhouse, as well as the kitchen and the flower garden, should be the pride and joy of the country woman’s heart.”
 
—E.H. LELAND, FARM HOMES, 1881
     

“An Excellent Butter-worker”
(above)

From American Agriculturist, December 1870
Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities
BUTTER-MAKING
The story of butter-making illustrates changes in men’s and women’s dairy work from the 1860s to the 1950s. In nineteenthcentury New England, much of the milk, which spoiled easily,was made into longer-lasting butter and sold by farm women.
 
   
Churning Day, Cape Neddick,Maine
Photograph by Fred Quimby
Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities
Typically butter-making took place indoors, and women did the churning, but this apparently staged outdoor photograph with barrel churn gave the photographer more light. The woman standing at the table is “working” the clump of butter with paddles.
“How To Churn”
From American Agriculturist, April 1872
The women considered butter-making hard and tiring.


Dairy-related advertisements,
From American Agriculturist, November 1886
Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities
     

 


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