Existing comment:
Welcome to the Dairy:
The building you are in was used to process milk. Cream was skimmed from milk as it cooled in pans placed on shelves located about three feet back from the brick work around the water trough. Look for a shadow along the walls for their location.
The cream was stored in containers in the deep trough. The water in the trough flows from an underground spring captured in the basin outside the building. It is conducted through an iron pipe located in the basin.
Cream was churned into butter, and the butter was marketed to customers in the area for over one hundred years.
Dairy maids, some enslaved, performed their duties practically every day of the year.
This building dates to at least the 1790s and is about three times the size of the typical dairy building for that time. |