School: Drumcar (roll number 16771)
- Location:
- Drumcar, Co. Louth
- Teacher: Mrs Bell
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0671, Page 135
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: Drumcar
- XML Page 135
- 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
- (continued from previous page)takes longer to do.
Churning is always done by the hand. The butter is made when it is in little lumps the size of a marble. When the churn begins to break water is usually poured in- and the churn turned slowly for a few minutes- when it is done.
The butter-milk is then allowed to flow out of the churn, and after this the butter is lifted out with a kind of wooden spoon and placed in a clean wooden bowl- in which it is well washed to rid the butter from every trace of water -
When it is thoroughly washed- salt is added and well mixed in the butter - with "clappers" or "Scotch hands", and weighed.
The buttermilk is sometimes given to pigs- and calves, while some is also kept for buttermilk bread.
When the butter is carefully weighed and put away- the churn, dishes, tables, and floor are all well scoured and dried.
