Dairying Bygones (Shire Library)

Dairying probably originated in Neolithic times, and by the sixteenth century the cow had become the principal dairy animal. By the mid-eighteenth century many farmers began to specialize in the production of dairy products - milk, butter and cheese - the excess of which could be sold. Victorian farmers who could afford to equipped their farms with up-to-date appliances, while the less affluent made do with older, often home-made equipment. This book examines the diverse range of dairy equipment used during this period, including milking stools and pails, churns for making butter, butter beaters, cheese vats, curd knives and cheese presses. Today, with the emergence of new markets for organic, farmers' market dairy products, this book reveals how much of today's technology remains very similar to that used in Victorian times.