Milk cans again

Didn't see the earlier post about milking by hand and milk cans in time to reply. Reminded me of growing up on a small dairy farm in the early 60's and my dad had a milk route picking up cans and dropping off empties. I was about 6 years old at the time and still remember the farms and how many cans there were at each one. The largest farm had 18 cans. Smallest farm had 2 cans. We had about 6 cans. At that time there were 3 milk plants in the area and we dropped off cans at all of them. Once in a while one would come back rejected. If you opened the can the contents were a mess of straw, blood, etc. Finally the milk plants forced everyone to go bulk. Hard to find a milk can in good condition any more.

(quoted from post at 13:12:48 02/05/18) Didn't see the earlier post about milking by hand and milk cans in time to reply. Reminded me of growing up on a small dairy farm in the early 60's and my dad had a milk route picking up cans and dropping off empties. I was about 6 years old at the time and still remember the farms and how many cans there were at each one. The largest farm had 18 cans. Smallest farm had 2 cans. We had about 6 cans. At that time there were 3 milk plants in the area and we dropped off cans at all of them. Once in a while one would come back rejected. If you opened the can the contents were a mess of straw, blood, etc. Finally the milk plants forced everyone to go bulk. Hard to find a milk can in good condition any more.

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Funny story about milk cans.Local farmer borrowed money from another farmer.When farmer #1 hauled his cans to the milk plant he loaded his truck with cans,full or empty they all went.Drove slow past farmer # 2's farm.A true story.

In the summer of '62, I got a summer job at a large commercial dairy, made $1.20 per hour which was the going rate I guess. I worked on what was called the Cream Floor ..... we had cream cans delivered from the trains and trucks from Northern Alberta, they came in the chute, we knocked the tie wires off and put them on a conveyor. Every one was then sampled and registered by hand in a ledger, the farmer's name and the tare can weight recorded. The little sample bottle for each can was tagged with a corresponding number and sent out for lab testing, butterfat % and all that. But right there on the floor it was tasted quickly (and spit out) as to the grade like table cream, #2, stink weed (yuk), etc. If a can came in with a mouse floating on the top of the cream and it was spotted, we mixed in a small bottle of red dye and shipped it back to the farmer full of cream. I heard that farmers would feed that to their pigs. Most nights when we cleaned up, there was a mouse or two around the drain in the vat we dumped the cream into so some were submerged and not spotted earlier. This cream was used for the most part for butter making. That summer I saw a Dutchman plumber (he wore wooden shoes and never wore socks) wade into a vat of cottage cheese in his bare feet to unblock a clogged drain ..... haven't had a lot of cottage cheese since, ha !!!

Hi Crazy Horse in the summer of 1966 I worked on my cousin's farm in Southern Alberta near Milk River. They had one milk cow that they would milk every day and the excess milk was separated into cream and stored in a refrigerator in the basement. Once a week someone would take the cans of cream to the train station in Milk River. I don't remember where the cans were shipped too.

JimB

Yummy stuff there!

Here's a story from around here... an open can was in the center aisle of the dairy barn, behind the cows. One cow immediately in front of the can humped up, and took a leak in the can, that was about 3/4 full of milk.

The woman milking told my relative who saw it,"Don't worry, I'll run it through the strainer. That will get that all out."

Back in the early 50's my dad shipped milk in cans. Truck driver noticed when he picked up that a couple of cans were a little below where they should have been. More than once. One morning Dad turned the lights off in the milk room and stepped around the corner. He heard the door open and went in a minute or later and old George had his head down in the neck of the can sipping. Dad yelled at him and told him you said you didn't like milk. George said nawsuh but I sho like the cream off it. It didn't happen any more. Tommy

Way back when I was young one of my uncles had a milk can route, then my cousins ran it. I went along once, one thing I noticed was the distinctive smells (rather pleasant) at various milkhouses.

Jim ...... like up here, probably to a big dairy somewhere. I worked at NADP (Northern Alberta Dairy Pool) in Edmonton, long gone now of course like everything else. The cans were painted a robin's egg blue at the top of the can with red lettering (farmer's name, town, and tare weight of the can). Do you remember if yours were color coded?

Plenty of milk cans in Wisconsin just watch for mail boxes