Making Butter

When I was a little girl back in the late 60’s, my parents made the decision to move from Los Angeles to Northern California. Now, to most people, northern California is the bay area of San Francisco, but we were five hours north of San Francisco and one hour south of the Oregon border on the coast what is commonly referred to as "behind the redwood curtain". We lived in the small town of Bayside which is adjacent to Arcata…home of Humboldt State University and the Marching Lumberjacks.

The reason for the move from the Los Angeles area was so that my sister and I would be raised outside of the city. With the arrival to our new home, my mother decided to embrace her inner Little House on the Prairie. Because we mainly raised beef cattle, a mighty herd of seven, Mom would order whole milk to be delivered from a local dairy. She bought herself a butter churn along with a bowl and paddle to press the butter. So along comes the milk delivery, the cream skimmed off the top, and the remaining milk was for our household use. The cream went into the churn and my sister and I would take turns turning the crank. What seemed like forever when you are nine, the butter would form and then out Mom would turn the butter onto the wooden bowl. She then went through the process of pressing the remaining fluid out and there we had golden, beautiful butter.

The other day, I was fondly remembering things from my youth and although I do not have Mom’s butter-making supplies, I truly wanted for our daughter to experience this process. I bought some heavy whipping cream and into the trusty Ball canning jar it went with a couple of marbles.

To my delight some extraordinary things happened. One: our 17 year old daughter was actually interested in trying this and B: she formed butter.

What was to follow was the three of us enjoying toast and our, yes our, butter.

Nothing is better…until I learn to bake my own bread!