The Creamery

Illustration by Ryan Miller.

By rights it should have been bulldozed. Farms are like this, when old stuff gets in the way, when sheds don’t fit the tractors any more, when barns don’t fit the cows, when fields and woods don’t fit center pivots. Buildings, even landforms can get old, grow antique, become hard to maintain, some are plain useless except as a shed for trash and wheelbarrows, most with flat tires. Farms, as said, are like that.

It should have been bulldozed, in fact there is even evidence the deity was in favor of the bulldozer. Four times in the last five generations a tornado has taken off its roof. Four times this old creamery has been rebuilt. Still four times ought to tell you something pretty straight, that nature’s god has a grudge against this structure, or at least its roof.

The creamery is the stone milk house dating from my grandfather’s use, in turn it became Uncle Curtis’ farm, Uncle Kingsley’s farm, my brothers and I bought the farm in ‘72 or ‘73. We cleared the fences, cleared the trees, took down the barn, we installed that marvel of portable prayer, the center pivot. But we did leave the granary, the shop and the creamery because it was a solid sort of structure, solid stone that is. 2011 was the second time in my ownership the creamery lost its roof. This time tearing out the lintel over the window and the cement floor badly buckled. Pretty evident then it was time for the bulldozer, or maybe a backhoe could accomplish this job. Plain as day, as the expression has it, to do it, just find the time to do it.

One day I was hanging around the site, waiting for fertilizer to arrive. I had said something about noon but they thought I meant Pacific Time. Maybe I was waiting for the seed truck, anyway I was waiting as happens in this farm business. I found myself looking at that old creamery to realize how that stonewall was of worked stone. Each stone faced as plumb as if built of cement block. Somebody cared a lot about that milk house, this creamery was their prideful accomplishment some summer what with a windmill nearby to pump water for the milk tank, circa 1880-90 and the birth of the crossroads creamery that was to define Wisconsin as a dairy state. This building was part of that epic enterprise and the marvel of its day, a deep-well windmill that pumped a gallon a minute of ice cold water to the milk tank, to the stock tank, to what was the municipal road tank where folks refilled their car radiators after ascending Moore Hill. This was the very milk house that allowed dairy herds to come to commercial size, a dozen cows, maybe two dozen if you had kids enough to milk them.

The creamery was a focal point of the farm, not only cooling the cream supply, but acting as a surrogate refrigerator in lieu of the icebox. Cool enough for cheese, a nice place to store apples, and for threshing there was nothing better, more reviving than milk house beer, brewed a touch hoppy as is the Methodist style, several touches to keep the dose to one quart jar each.

The creamery has a new roof. My conscience found me out and I discovered a pile of close-out roofing at Menards, mixed colors of steel roofing to include a set of new rafters, the window lintel rebuilt, new windows, new door, new cement floor, about $600 cash to save a useless little shed. I don’t yet know what we’ll use it for but that creamery does tend ghosts nicely, grandfather’s creamery and our grandmother’s secret threshing remedy, served in mason jars. Ordinarily beer makers, even Central Waters will try anything in a flavor most would recognize as cough syrup.

I did attach the roof better this time, the anchor plates drilled into the wall, perhaps to survive the next tornado. Perhaps to convince meteorological deities to go pick on something else.