Separating the Cream :)

We bought this cream separator several years ago and because we've been low on butter for months now Papa dragged it into the house and set it up. I've had VERY little to do with one ever. In fact the only time I'd ever seen one work before was watching Grandma Griggs use hers the 1st couple of years we were married.. I'd never used it or cleaned it or anything. So this was Papa's baby!! lol. The 1st night he got quite a bit of cream with minimal mess. COOL!! Here he is, above, working the machine. From what I understood, you put the warm milk in the top open part and crank the handle and cream comes into the white bucket and milk into the metal milking bucket. Papa made that handle MOVE!! The cream was SO thick it took FOREVER to get to the end of the spout, never mind fill the bucket (which is about how much cream I would have gotten from 3 almost 4 gallons if I'd hand skimmed it. ) We got half a bucket full... 

And the next morning it was HARD. Hmmm.... somethings wrong here?? LOL.

So the next night we tried it again... still hard cream the next morning and not super lots of it. Now two things started running through my head.. our cow is really weird with her cream.. or we're doing something wrong! I figured it was probably the second one.. how strange could Maggie be?? 

So Papa started asking around. My uncle thought he was doing everything right as long as he put it together right. So we checked the system.. changed one little thing.. nope the cream is still sparse and SOLID the next morning. Then we happened to go to my folks and Papa and I were talking about it there and my Dad pipes up and says 'Your going to fast! Slow that thing down and it'll work a lot better.. there should be a bell that tells you how fast to go.' There is no bell. BUT bonus we now know what is up!! So Papa goes SLOW. We get LOTS of cream.. and lots of milk in the cream. So he speeds up just a bit. Now we can SEE the line of milk and cream coming out of the cream trough!! So he speeds up until it's just cream!! YEAH!!!

I have to admit though I'd rather skim off the cream later when the milk is cool.. lol. I only washed the machine once and that's not why.. what a MESS!! Go to fast and cream and milk squirt out holes everywhere!! Papa, after several weeks, is finally getting the hang of the thing and he's the only one who uses it. 

 The milking area all cleaned up! Under the table you can see Papa's carboy of beer waiting to be kegged. That metal tall thing is a keg but it's broken or something so he's only using one at the moment :) The clear box of colored things is the bath toy box.. when the kids get an inch to have a bath they get one in that big sink!!