Churning Day

A thick crust, coarse-grained as limestone rough-cast, hardened gradually on top of the four crocks that stood, large pottery bombs, in the small pantry . After the hot brewery of gland, cud and udder, cool porous earthenware fermented the butter milk for churning day, when the hooped churn was scoured with plumping kettles and the busy scrubber echoed daintily on the seasoned wood. It stood then, purified, on the flagged kitchen floor. Out came the four crocks, spilled their heavy lip of cream, their white insides, into the sterile churn. The staff, like a great whiskey muddler fashioned in deal wood, was plunged in, the lid fitted. My mother took first turn, set up rhythms that, slugged and thumped for hours. Arms ached. Hands blistered. Cheeks and clothes were spattered with flabby milk . Where finally gold flecks began to dance. They poured hot water then, sterilized a birchwood bowl and little corrugated butter-spades. Their short stroke quickened, suddenly a yellow curd was weighting the churned-up white, heavy and rich, coagulated sunlight that they fished, dripping, in a wide tin strainer, heaped up like gilded gravel in the bowl. The house would stink long after churning day, acrid as a sulphur mine. The empty crocks were ranged along the wall again, the butter in soft printed slabs was piled on pantry shelves . And in the house we moved with gravid ease, our brains turned crystals full of clean deal churns, the plash and gurgle of the sour-breathed milk, the pat and slap of small spades on wet lumps.