Cow milking in 1850s Scotland

Scotland being a cool climate zone, in many months milk would stores OK in any unheated part of the house or cellar for a few days but the supply keeps being replenished so consumption is the key. You make cheese. In warmer months you quickly use it in cooked foods such as bread. You try to sell it, give it to neighbors, distribute some to the poor. You don't have 200 dairy cows, just a few to provide what you need. You make butter of the cream. Any milk you think might be in danger of spoiling, you give to the calf. Whatever does spoil, you feed to the pigs.

gastropod

Things to make with milk

1. Butter
• Equipment: A settling pan, a cup or skimmer to skim the cream off the milk, a crock or bucket to store the cream, a butter churn, a bowl for washing the butter, paddles for shaping the butter (Scotch hands), butter molds (optional), salt (optional).
• There is more than one type of butter. Starting in the 19th century, people starting making sweet cream butter, which is butter made from unfermented cream, because better methods of refrigeration were developed and you could store the cream from several milkings without it souring. It takes a lot of cream to make butter, so you'd have to collect the cream over several days to get enough to make butter. Milk really needs to be stored at around 40 degrees Fahrenheit consistently not to spoil, and it's pretty difficult to do that without refrigeration. So butter before widespread refrigeration would be made from fermented cream and is called cultured butter.
• Fun fact: The shape of the paddles on dashers varied regionally in Scotland, though most were based on an X shape.
• Helpful links: Old & Interesting: Butter Churns
2. Cheese
• Holy crap, are there a lot of variations on cheese. It varied widely by region, and the regions were small. Like butter, it takes a lot of milk to make cheese, but it's typically made from whole milk, not cream, so it takes less time to gather enough. Unfortunately, I know nothing about cheese and Scotland, and cheese making is such an involved process that I don't feel safe saying anything about it. Generally, though, cheese is made by encouraging milk to separate into curd and whey by adding either rennet (typically from a milk-fed calf's stomach in the 19th century) or an acid (like vinegar). Then the curds are separated out from the whey and are processed, usually with salt being added. Sometimes dyes (like anatto or saffron) are added to give it color, as most new cheeses are white. Then the cheese is often aged and this usually means the texture and flavor of it will change.
• Helpful links: Dunlop cheese (a type of Scottish cheese), Barbara Gilmour (the woman who introduced Dunlop cheese in the 17th century), a timeline of the McLelland cheese producers
3. Other Things
• Note: A lot of this is going to vary by economic class. If your farmers are dirt poor and just scratching by, they're not going to be able to afford to eat custards and puddings and such. Even breads made with milk are probably going to be out of their reach economically. Eggs and sugar and spices are expensive.
• Custards: Made with cream, eggs, and milk. It's generally sweetened and flavored with different things. Vanilla, citrus, and cinnamon are popular. Eggnog is a custard drink, and bread pudding is bread baked in a custard sauce.
• Milk Bread: Adding milk to bread gives it a more tender crumb and enriches it. Most bread recipes calling for milk are made with fine white flour and are sweet breads made for holidays (hot cross buns for Easter or Christmas stollen in Germany). They aren't for everyday use. Brown bread is more likely for that, as it is much cheaper.
• Buttermilk: You don't throw this stuff away! People drink it. You can use it, along with baking powder/baking soda, to make things like bread rise, because it's slightly acidic and reacts with the baking powder/soda.
• Drop scones/Scotch pancake: Most of the recipes I've seen for drop scones call for milk. They're like pancakes and are made on a griddle. See also crumpets.

Notes about Cows

• Cows in Scotland at this time probably aren't the black and white ones you're used to seeing in advertising today. The black and white ones are Holsteins, and are originally from The Netherlands. (Although according to the Wikipedia article, Holsteins were imported to Yorkshire in the 18th century, so maybe a Holstein would be OK. Hmm.) You probably want a breed like an Ayshire, which originate in Scotland and are smaller and probably sweeter tempered than Holsteins. (Uh, most other breeds of cows are, though. Holsteins tend to be both curious and aggressive.) Breeds of cattle in the 19th century are still sort of an emerging trend, and a farmer might breed his cows with any other breed of cattle if they had traits he desired in the offspring. Typically, breeds in the 19th century were smaller than modern breeds, and at the shoulder will probably be about the same height as most 19th-century women's shoulders. About 45-50 inches or so?
• Temperament: Feeding cows at milking makes them easier to handle (it's a reward!) and more inclined to return. Additionally, animals that are handled frequently in a kind way tend to be sweeter tempered, because they're accustomed to people. It's best to talk around them in low, gentle voices, because angry voices will make them nervous, and you generally don't want something that weighs a thousand pounds to be nervous around you. Some people used to sing while they were milking, because the cows find it soothing and it makes boring tasks less boring. There's a little bit about Scottish milking songs in this Google book, Work Songs by Ted Gioia. The link should take you right to it.
• Milkmaids: There's this tradition of, oh, sexual innuendo about milkmaids milking, because the motion is similar to a motion that men would like milkmaids to perform upon a certain part of their anatomy. To just come out and say it, they relate milking to handjobs. :| Just an interesting historical tidbit that might provide plot fodder.

Sorry if that was too much information! Let me know if you have any questions.

“Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed.” -- Geoffrey Chaucer

“There's no workman, whatsoever he be, That may both work well and hastily.” -- Geoffrey Chaucer

All we do in my family is pour the milk through cheesecloth to take out any straw or hay that's fallen in, put it into glass jars, cool it off in ice water (I'm thinking a cool stream would do for that part...?) and store it in the fridge. I guess you could put it wherever you want in the 1800's... what did they use for fridges, anyway? =)

My mother grew up on a farm with no electricity. It was 1930's Kansas, but the principles are probably similar. :)

The milk would be strained and placed in jars with lids. Whatever the family wasn't going use, or make into butter or cheese, before the next milking was made into sour cream.

There was a "springhouse," a small stone shed with cool creek water running through a concrete trough set into in the floor, where the jars of sour cream were set into the water to stay cool until they were collected for sale (every 2-3 days or so). In 1850's Scotland the trough would have been stone, but many farms would have had a springhouse. If not, they could put sealed (with wax, generally) jars into a bucket and lower them into the well, or just keep them in a nearby creek/burn.

Some more notes on milking:

- Cows have to be milked on a regular schedule (traditionally, twice a day, as close to 12 hours apart as feasible). A cow who is producing milk is producing it all the time, and their udders only hold so much. An hour or two late isn't too bad, although the cows will be pretty unhappy with it; but after 4-6 hours the cows will start to risk serious problems like infections or even (grit your teeth for this one) split udders.

- It takes some dexterity to master the motion of squeezing with each finger in turrn to strip the milk out of the teat (I could never do it it all the few times I tried). You also have to squeeze pretty darned hard, and do it over and over and over and over. My mother developed very strong muscles in her hands, and was more than equal to any lid on any pickle jar on the planet. If she had ever applied the strength and motion she used for milking cows to the genitalia of a human male, he would have needed immediate medical attention. (Whether my mother ever actually gave anyone a hand job, of any kind, is just not something I care to contemplate.)

- In cold weather, it's important to make sure your hands are warm (usually done by sticking them into your armpits for a bit) before applying them to the cow.

- Also, if you push your head firmly into the cow's side; it signals her to let down her milk; helps you keep your place on the milking stool; and means that, if she does decides to take a swipe at you with her tail, she can't really get you very hard. :)

NaNo Rebel, With a Many A Subordinate Clause

When the milk went sour it could be used to make Crowdie, which is a soft cheese rather like cottage cheese. Basically it’s just the curds separated from the whey, mixed with salt, and then compressed to extract as much liquid as possible. It doesn’t need rennet. It wouldn’t keep for very long in the way that a hard cheese would, but it would extend the useful life of the milk.
It’s still made today, with many variations, and tastes delicious.

Ha! When it comes to penises, wishful thinking is very frequently stupid thinking.

“Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed.” -- Geoffrey Chaucer

“There's no workman, whatsoever he be, That may both work well and hastily.” -- Geoffrey Chaucer

Thank you so much, everybody!!

Also, another question. So we've got this small Scottish farm -- what's the farmhouse like? Is it a one-room shack? Would that be normal? Would kitchen/bedroom be all the same room? And what are their chairs/tables/beds made of? What about their dishes? Silverware? I keep running into these random tiny things that you never think about...

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"I've learned two things in my life. One that love is the beginning and end of all meaning. And two that it is the same thing whatever shape our souls have taken on this journey. Love is love. Is love." -Clive Barker's Abarat