At any one time, we milked between 20-24 cows, all Holstein. All of the milk was stored in the classic 1930’s style milk cans, 24 inches tall that held 10 gallons of milk. Many of these cans are now collectibles, assigned to the task of holding up mailboxes or standing as yard decorations. Leo has a milk can from the farm outside his door at his residence in Minnesota. At their prime, these cans were the only way to haul the milk to the local creamery. Every morning the milk truck would come down the driveway and back up along side the milk house. Then the clanking of metal cans would begin. Empty cans would be unloaded first to make room for the full cans that would be loaded up. All the cans had numbers painted on the top unique to each farm on the route. Once the cans were exchanged, the truck would move onto the next farm, eventually end up at the Koro Creamery were the milk was tested, pasteurized, and made into cheese.
The milking routine started by opening the gate and letting the cows in the barn. All the cows automatically parked themselves to their ‘assigned’ or favorite stanchion. If one cow in her haste went to the wrong one, it would start a chain reaction of confused cows that would eventually sort itself out. With cows all in place, all stanchions on the north side of the barn were locked down at once with the sliding bar that ran the length of the barn. All cows on the south side were locked down with individual locking stanchions requiring someone to walk from cow to cow. Cows secure, let the milking begin.
First, we would turn on the electric motor that ran the vacuum system. As long as cows were being milked, there was a hum that ran through the barn. A pipeline, connected to the vacuum pump, ran over the stanchions the full length of the barn. A pipeline distributed the vacuum over all the stanchions with hand operated petcock valves between every two cows, so no matter what cow you were milking, you could always connect your machine to the vacuum. All the Surge milking machines required a vacuum to operate. The vacuum not only powered the pulsating equipment that milked the cow alternating between two teats at a time, but the vacuum was also used to hold the machine onto the cows udder during the milking process.
Next we would roll out the milk cans from the milk house to the east side of the barn, pop the lids and place the milk strainer on top of one or two of the cans. Inside the milk strainer, we would place a round filter, secure it in place at the bottom of the strainer so all milk poured in would pass through the filter and into the can. As the cans filled, we would move the strainer to the next empty can. As each cow was milked, the machine would be emptied into an open stainless steel pail. It provided an opportunity to inspect the milk. Each pail would be carried to the east end and dumped into one of the milk strainers. It was never a good idea to overfill a milk can as that milk was lost. However, the cats and kittens that called the barn their home loved any milk they could find. Dumping the milk into the strainer and returning an empty pail for the next cow was a popular job for me.
Straps were placed on the midsection of the cows, connected at the bottom with a metal rod, so the Surge milking machine could hang under the cow, but off the ground. The four cups would be placed on each teat of the cow, and milking would start. When finished, the petcock was closed to cut the vacuum supply, and the cups were removed from the udder and the machine removed from under the cow. Removing the cups would also release the vacuum so the head of the milking machine would come off, and the milk could be poured out of the stainless steel tank into the pail. Then the machine would be placed on the next cow. At most, we had three milking machines going at one time in the barn.
When the power went out as would happen after a bad storm, we would connect the vacuum supply to the intake manifold of the tractor to produce a vacuum to run two machines. The tractor never had sufficient vacuum to run more than 2 of the three machines at once. In those cases, it was usually necessary to be milking by hand at the same time to finish at a reasonable time. We never had a portable electrical generator to provide power in a power outage. Now days, I cannot fathom any farming commercial operation not having the ability to generate part if not all the power needed on site.
When the milking was done, usually in less than two hours, we would start the clean up. All the milk equipment was rinsed out and cleaned using the stored water in the water tanks. We also used a liberal supply of BK (Bacteria Killer), a heavy chlorine based powder. We would then hang all the equipment up to drain and dry.
In this picture from the early 1960’s, Dan and Leo are in the process of pouring milk into the strainers which then fills the cans. When the cans would fill, we would we would roll or carry the cans back to the milk house, and swing them into a tank of water, which was the only source of cooling for the milk. To keep the milk cool, it was required that the water be replaced daily. There they would remain until the milk man made his morning run. If we have left him an order for any cheese or butter from the creamery the day before, he would leave the requested product in the milk house the next day. This next day delivery was 40 years ahead of it time.
LESSONS LEARNED
A vacuum is a powerful force. A simple vacuum, when properly harnessed, could extract gallon of milk from cows. I use to play with the vacuum, and was impressed by the power of the absence of air. It would leave a welt like mark on my skin when I pressed it up against an open valve.
I don’t know who invented a vacuum milker, but what a genius!
UPDATE:
The barn is still standing, with a fresh coat of paint. Something the barn never had in the prior 80 or so more years. The south side stanchions have been removed to make room for all the equipment that was stored in the barn. The sound of cows, milking machines, vacuum pumps and the barn radio was replaced with the cold silence.