SC - Milk-Down on the Farm-longish
LrdRas
LrdRas at aol.com
Tue Jan 13 07:46:45 PST 1998
In a message dated 1/13/98 2:10:13 AM Eastern Standard Time, acrouss at gte.net
writes:
<< What happens
> if you stop milking your livestock during these times? >>
If the animals are still producing milk, they must be milked. To neglect this
process would put the animal into considerable pain and danger of infection or
other nasties.
<<Does the milk dry up? >>
Eventually the milk will dry up. Although there were specific breeds of sheep
raised solely for milk as opposed to wool/mutton, the "family cow" was not
designed to be a milk factory as are the dairy breeds today. With judicious
husbundry the cycle of milk to dry cow, would most likely have occured at just
this time of year for a good portion of animals. Of course, animals are as
unique individually as are humans and the individual families would have been
aware of the breeding cycles of their privately owned animals..
<<Or were these times when the milk wasnt generally available anyway? >>
As noted above the production of cow's milk would most definitely have fallen
off dramatically by the Lenten season. During this time any milk from cows
which was still being produced could have been used in many ways.
<<Or would they have continued milking the animals and just thrown out the
milk (which I doubt) or make products that would keep such as cheese? >>
With the cows going dry and sheep freshening, it would have been a simple
matter to use the limited milk from the cow for butter production or for pig
swill. Which is exactly what we used to do on the farm.
Since we seperated our milk and sold the milk and cream seperately , there
were many times when we had too few milk cans and too much milk. The answer,
of course, is obvious. Simply put the extra milk into the pig slop. (You
really don't want to know what else went into the pig mix.) These 55 gal
barrels obvious soured. Each morning, evening and when any noticed the pig's
needed food throughtout the day, buckets of this sour milk were mixed with
grain and kitchen middlens to feed the pig's. I st
pping the hogs" have changed very little , if at
all since the Middle Ages. Add to this the fact that acorns and roots would
not have been readily available for pig feeding at this time of the year such
use of excess milk would have been logical in a society based upon
agriculture.
<<Or were these times when the milk wasnt generally available>>
To conclude my tho'ts about the use of excess milk during the Lenten season ,
IIRC, the Lenten season is 40 days of mourning preceeding the memory of the
death of Jesus the Christ which ends with the celebration of His ressurection
on Easter Sunday. (Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong as my
knowledge of Christian festivals is limited to those customs that directly
affect my own religion). Traditional Easter cuisine features a LOT of butter.
So, IMHO, during the Middle Ages, the excess milk produced by cows during the
Lenten season was most probably made into butter and used to slop the hogs.
al-Sayyid Ras al-Zib, AoA, OSyc
============================================================================
To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
============================================================================
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list