One day, after I had been on the farm about a week, Uncle Ben took Frank and me to the creamery. A creamery is a place where the milk and cream are separated and butter is made.

We found several wagonloads of milk being unloaded. The milk was weighed as it was received, for it is sold by weight.

The milk was then strained into a large galvanized iron tub, from which a pipe carried it into a circular machine called the separator. The separator revolves rapidly, throwing the milk, which is heavier than the cream, to the outer edge, where it passes through small holes into a compartment by itself. The cream rises along the center and passes through another set of openings into a special compartment. A pipe carries it to a large vat, while another pipe conveys the milk to large tanks.Uncle Ben told me that when people make their own butter, they must wait for the cream to rise on the milk. The cream is then skimmed off, and the milk is called skimmed milk. Although the milk in the creamery is not skimmed, the same name is used for it.

I asked if the skimmed milk was used for anything. Uncle Ben gave me a cupful of it to taste. It was very good. He then told me that the separator takes out only the part needed in making butter, leaving all of the sugar. I did not know before that milk contains sugar.

The farmers take home loads of this milk to feed it to their hogs. For each hundred pounds of milk delivered, they get back seventy-five pounds of skimmed milk, besides the pay for their cream.

The creamery man told me that he made from four to six pounds of butter from one hundred pounds of milk.

The cream remains in the large vat about twenty-four hours before it is churned. The churn, as you see by the picture, is a great barrel made to revolve by machinery. It takes from thirty-five minutes to one hour to churn. The man told me that I might look at the book in which he kept the record of the churning. I saw that he made from two hundred fifty to six hundred pounds of butter at a churning. He said that some churns would produce more than one thousand pounds at a churning.

Not all of the cream is made into butter. There is left in the bottom of the churn a liquid called buttermilk. This is drawn off, and the butter is washed and worked before being taken out of the churn. The working is done by means of paddles in the churn. It continues for six or eight minutes and squeezes the liquid out of the butter.

While the butter is being worked, it is salted. Some of the butter is unsalted, but most of it is salted. When butter is made in the home, it must be churned by hand. Only a few pounds at a time can be made in this way.

When the butter was taken out of the churn, the men packed it solidly in wooden boxes about two feet square and four inches deep. The bottom of each box consisted of strips as wide as a square of butter. These were held together by a clamp, and the sides were hooked to the bottom and to one another. When the butter is to be cut into squares, these sides are removed and zinc ones take their places. In these there are slits running from top to bottom. Through these slits a wire saw is run, and so the butter is quickly cut into one or two pound squares. The butter is then wrapped in fancy papers upon which the name of the butter or of the creamery is stamped.

Of course some of the butter is packed in wooden tubs and shipped in that form. This butter is a little cheaper than that put up in squares.