Kitchen Table Memories

The Wrought Iron post described the kitchen table in the Marilla house and asked for peoples' memories of times around that table. Sharon (Stroinski) Buckley has offered her memory, which is apparently anchored pretty securely with taste and fragrance impressions:

"I think that was the table Debbie and I had breakfast one morning when we stayed over where we had milk from Fitzingers farm(not sure I spelled it right ). I remember it tasted awful cause it was straight from the cow. After all these years I still can taste it. Sorry Julie. I'm a city girl."

Ha!  Sorry, Sharon.  Dad was an early-adopter of the natural-foods thing, as you may recall.  Part of that was buying raw milk right out of the milkhouse at the Pfitzinger farm across the road.  The good parts were that it was fresh and that it had pretty high butterfat content.  The downside included occasional "barny" flavors and odors.  Old-fashioned barns just never had good ventilation, so there were always some dust and some ammonia in the air.  Old-fashioned milking systems had stainless-steel vessels (very cleanable, and they cleaned constantly and vigorously) but the equipment was hand-carried around in the barn, and had openings that necessarily opened to the air sometimes.

Modern dairy farms have very much better ventilation; you can drive around and see cow barns with no sidewalls and lots of fans and tubes.  In the winter they have thermal curtains that unroll like roller shades on windy days; these block the wind and retain the heat, but the fans and tubes keep working all winter.

Modern milking equipment keeps the milk all enclosed in stainless steel from the moment it exits the teat to the moment it ends up in the stainless steel bulk tank.  So it is cleaner and it smells better and gets cooled faster than ever it did in the good old days.  As well, the standards for bacteria count, inflammation indicators, and residues of medications are very, very much more rigorous than in decades past.

No buckets, no bedding in the milking parlor.

Lots of light, lots of testing and  checking and monitoring.

Dunno who these people are; these photos are just off Google.
But this guy looks just as nice as I remember Mr. Pfitzinger.

Pfitzinger farm is still going, but they milk in another location in a modern barn.  The old place is used for raising youngstock.

So you've got me thinking about your childhood kitchen, upstairs on 65 Poplar Avenue.  You ready? I remember watching in awe as my big cousin Sharon strolled into the kitchen carrying a shirt with a button off; immediately, smoothly, and without fuss drew open one of those white-painted drawers in the built-in cabinet; retrieved therefrom a needle and thread; and leaned back against the kitchen counter talking away and sewing that button on by herself.  My admiration for that demonstration of skill and elegance was boundless.  Sorry I didn't say anything at the time.  I was too wowed to speak.  There you go.

Julie