School: Crossroads (roll number 4143)
- Location:
- Garshooey, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: M. Philips
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1107, Page 4
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Crossroads
- XML Page 4
- XML “Churning”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- Churning used to be done in every farm house at least once per week, and often every day, and once per week in Winter.
Long ago people used to make their own churns and the other necessary utensils used in churning.
We have a churn at home but it is not used only in Summer and even seldom then as it is cheaper to send the milk to the creamery.
The churn is two feet in height and about one and a half feet in diameter. There is a lid for the churn which fits closely. there is a round hole in the middle of the lid. This is to hold the churn staff steady when not in use.
Long ago the old people had a very slow and tedious method of churning. They had a churn that had to be worked by hand, This is called a "box" churn. The churns are made of wood and some have iron rings around them to keep the churn together.
When the milk is being churned hot water is put in at intervals, to bring the milk to the required temperature. If too much water is put into the milk it becomes "scalded" and the butter is of a very yellow hue.
When the butter is ready it is lifted out and put(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Betty Phillips
- Gender
- Female
