Real Butter in Darling

We can still buy homemade butter in Darling! One of the places where it is kept is in a fridge at the Darling Museum. It is a lovely pale cream butter, not as salty or as yellow as commercial butter, and it is wrapped in thick waxy paper. That is why I love these country museums, they truly keep traditions alive!

Museum Day is an annual function, where the creamery section of the museum truly comes alive. The antiques and lovingly protected utensils of the creamery trade comes off the shelves. Butter is made using the objects of long ago. We can hear about the function of shallow dishes where fresh cream were left to rise to the top. We can touch the seperators which automated the process of dividing milk and cream.....how "modern" the farmers felt when they obtained this implement! Butter was then churned, rocked, beaten, I remember that each of my aunts had a different style of doing this. Lastly the butter was sifted and salt worked through with a patterned wooden ladle. The butter was ready to be eaten on warm thick slices of farm bread!

Today's images: My third cow painting.....the first two have not been sold, so I am careful about buying such a nice frame for this painting. I painted only a few cows, not in great detail, so as not to detract from the peace of the scene and the clump of trees on top of the hill.

The sketch appeared a few years ago with my story of the creamery corner in the museum.

The photos show a real demo at the Darling Museum, the buttermilk being poured into bottles. Also some lovely antique objects from the dairy trade.