Look what John and The Matriarch brought me back from Missouri. The label on the back says Flynn milk. I need to try and date the bottle.
The theory is that you let the milk sit overnight, all the cream rises then you can pour the cream off without any milk diluting it. Usually I very carefully submerge a ladle and skim the cream off the top for my coffee or to make butter or sauces. Isn’t that great!
There are a terrific number of very useful American inventions that make life easier for the homesteader. Especially in the kitchen and the fields. Many of these stunning implements are loitering in dusty bric a brac stores and antique shops and the lofts in barns. And like the butter churns and the grabber for lifting hay, post hole diggers like big tweezers, corn shuckers and sausage makers, potato shovels, coffee grinders, mangles and hoes, I am happy tor relieve them of their museum existence and use them. No electricity necessary.
And they are always built to last for centuries. I think that the people who worked the land, milking their own cow, raising their families, growing their own wheat and beans and meat and vegetables and storing it all for the winter, heating their houses with wood and planting trees to keep the house cool in summer, being sustainable and organic before the labels were touted, all without electricity, were some of the most innovative bunch I am learning about. And the bravest.
This is how we spent our Easter Sunday morning. The tree assassins are going to start setting fire to the piles of unwanted trees today so we are working against the clock to pull out firewood. My shoulders ache, but it is a good ache. The teenagers are set to help today so I have a reprieve from the job of hauling the wood out of the piles. John is hoping to get a couple more loads. While they are off doing that I shall split and stack this lot.
Thankfully we have a wood splitting thingy that attaches to the green tractor. I have two sharp axes, but I really do prefer to take the easy way out when dealing with this much wood at a time. And as you know I prefer to pack my own woodshed (we call it the Wendy House) so that in the dark of the winter I know exactly where to go to grab the weight of wood that I want.
I have a wee list of people who would like a tree planted in their name. What an absolutely stunning thing. Thank you so much for wanting to do this. It is a joyful task for me and you can watch your own trees grow on these pages. I have a lovely local tree nursery, you and I will visit it today in my break and start to make some choices.
Have a lovely day.
love celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
59 responses to “Milk bottle from Missouri”
Lovely, lovely post – the bottle and the pile of warmth. I too would love to have two trees – planted in the name of two dear departed friends: Willi Morita and Pat O’Neill. I will pay you for them, though.if I can find how to turn euros into dollare.
Love,
ViV x
When the kids travel they like to go to museums…there they always tell the people that ‘our parents still use that’. Of course the museum people are horrified and honestly don’t believe them, but it is true and we do. Everyone favorite is the corn sheller! But we have other stuff, because Terry and I can’t bear to throw things away if they still work. ( And no we don’t look like a house/farm/place the American Pickers would like to stop in…we use the stuff. We don’t just collect the stuff. 🙂 )
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
I love printed glass. (Linda here.) I think it’s because I remember my mum and dad having printed tumblers when I was A kid, and I remember bottles that were printed like that in Canada, where I spent a year or so as a child, my dad was working over there.
And a tree planted for me, too. Trees were/still are a precious commodity on the prairie of my youth.
Look at all that wonderful wood!
I envy you if you have an antique coffee grinder. It’s the very thing I need!
Please plant a tree (or two) for my parents and maternal grandparents. After my parents retired, they moved to my maternal grandparents’ old house in a very small Kansas town. Everyone enjoyed visiting with family and friends under the trees in that yard. They accumulated quite a collection of lawn chairs over the years 🙂
I can imagine, those big old sit under-able trees are priceless! I would love to plant a tree for your old people.. c
The theory about the milk bottle indeed works. Our milk was delivered in bottles with the narrow neck top and the cream would be carefully poured off. We loved it in the winter time because the cream would freeze and actually lift the cap right off. We would cut this off and eat the cream frozen (ice cream being a rare luxury as we had an ice-box not a refrigerator).. V.
I remember this in England when I was growing up! And if you didn’t bring the milk in as soon as the milk man left it, we had little birds (called Blue Tits, about the size of a Chickadee) that would peck to tops to get at the cream. My Dad and I would fight for the cream on our cornflakes in the mornings! I miss milk delivered in a glass bottle!!
Wow, lotta hard work out there–but I’m sure it keeps you fit. If you still have enough energy for more tree planting, I would like one. 🙂 I have a teeny townhouse backyard so not much room for planting trees. I would like to think of a lovely tree planted for me growing on your farmy. 🙂
If there is still room I would love a tree planted for me in another continent.
It sure is a beautiful milk bottle and functional. It’s so good that the tree murderer gave you the opportunity to collect the dead bits for firewood. That is a absolutely the best exercise ever.
Wow, I’ve never seen a milk bottle like that! Thanks for the pic. 🙂
I love your Flynn milk/cream bottle, and also share your affection for old kitchen-household items. I am sad to see them discarded, so feel like I need to give them a good home too. A while back there was an exchange of comments, after one of of your posts, about mincers for sale on EBay which prompted me to have a look. I found a Spong mincer and mentioned it to the G.O. but didn’t buy it. He must have been chatting to Dad about it, and last weekend out of the back of the ute comes a Spong mincer Dad had found who knows when-where, stashed and given to the G.O. for me 🙂
Celi, that bottle is absolutely gorgeous! And so nice to see a sunny photo.. xx
Oh such nice wood to season. And yes stacking is an art – everyone has a style.
Do rescue old things with use – when growing up my dad was so dad to see abandoned homesteads (moved to big city) with farm and house items left to rust. We have of few things still – some milk bottle, but ours don’t have enough print to read.
Hugs for friends of trees!
I agree, things used to be built to be real companions and helpers to people for decades and decades! Not like all the ‘disposable’ tools now.