KINGDOM COMMONS

KINGDOM COMMONS

The Little Red Milk House - Several visitors have asked us about the "little red house". Some think it's an out-house. Others think a tool shed and someone even suggested it might be a barn for small cows (the observer was 7 years old). Actually, it's a Vermont milk house. A relic of a day gone by.

History - Originally, Vermont farms were primarily small, producing just enough milk for a family and perhaps some extra to trade in larger towns for goods not available on the farm. A family might have one or two cows to milk, to help plow fields, and for transportation, along with chickens, a couple of pigs, or some sheep.

As textile mills opened in New England cities, Vermont farmers began to raise sheep for wool in the mid 1800’s. Sheep from Merino, Spain, were imported to satisfy the developing market. Farmers sent their wool by wagon and by railway to larger cities. By the 1870’s, however, Vermont farmers faced increasing competition from the new western territories that had more acreage thus bigger farms - and cheaper prices.

At the same time that the wool industry was declining in Vermont, the butter industry was expanding. Butter had been a product of Vermont farms for decades, but made mostly for family use. Butter churning was labor intensive and it was not until the Franklin County Creamery in St. Albans, Vermont, built a centralized butter-making factory that butter became a profitable enterprise for many farmers. Eventually, our hill-town had the Lowell Creamery. The next year, in 1881, the Maine Central Railway began refrigerated railroad service to Boston, opening up a new market for Vermont agriculture. Farmers imported breeds of cows that were known for their high milk production and not necessarily for their work in the field. During this time, until the early 1900’s, Jerseys were the most popular cows in Vermont because of their milk’s high butterfat content.

It was at about this time that our "little red milk house" would have begun to see use. It provided a place for "belly" cans (no doubt named for the practice of lifting them up to ones belly for carrying) to be kept while waiting for a wagon - or later a truck - to pick them up.

During storage, the cans had to be kept cold. The first method of "refrigeration" was to have the cold water from the farm's spring flow through a holding tank built into the milk house where the cans of milk were kept. Later, with the arrival of electricity, a refrigeration unit could be placed in the milk house, thus providing a more sanitary method of refrigeration. Our milk house? Well, it has both forms of refrigeration still intact providing us with a clearer look of what it was like all those years ago.

Eventually, new technologies replaced the old way and in 1952, the first "bulk tank" was installed in Vermont. Bulk tanks allowed farmers to keep their milk cool on site while awaiting pickup by a larger milk truck. Within ten years, almost all dairy farms had bulk tanks. Except our old place, which did not go the way of the bulk tank method of storage which required considerable financial investment. The industry was consolidating and many small farms went out of business. At the same time, larger farms and those farms willing and able to invest in new technology grew. Fewer milk producers remained, but those that did, produced more milk.

An interesting note - a friend of ours, Robert Fournier, from Troy, Vermont, remembers picking up milk at our "little red milk house". He drove truck for his father, who had a small milk trucking business. "You had to be careful. If you tried to get too close to the milk house, so you wouldn't have to carry the cans too far, you might hit the roof". The little house still has scars from drivers anxious to "shorten their carry".