I have enjoyed reading Regena Handy’s column in The Enterprise. It brought me back to the year of 1948 when my neighbor sent me a cake of home-churned butter.
I never thought I would ever miss home-churned butter. I was the youngest child in the family, and the last to leave home. While I was in high school my mother would leave the churning for me to do when I came home. Our churn was called a “Dazey Churn.” It had a wheel that you turned by hand. I was supposed to read several library books during the year. I used this time to read. I would get so caught up in the story, I would forget to check on the milk. My mother would come in and look at it, and there would be a ball of butter ready to take out. She would put it in a bowl with a little cold water to wash out the milk that was left on it. Then it could be molded with a wooden paddle in a wood butter mold. When I married I still churned, but I then used a stone jar and a wooden dasher that you pushed up and down. As years went by, someone that was smart came up with an electric motor that would fit over the churn. I used the electric churn a good many years.
The cows were sold, I sold my butter churns, the electric motor has retired and now lays on the shelf.
Mamie A. Hill
