A CREAMERY AND THE BLACKSMITH SHOPS IN LAGRANGE Edmund Van Wyck
A creamery is a place where cream is churned into butter. By definition, cream is the yellowish, fatty component of unhomogenized milk that tends to accumulate at the surface. ( Cream has nothing in common with "peep" or "pream" or any other concoction presently being sold to put in your morning coffee.) The cream is agitated in a churn (there are dozens of different kinds of churns) until the particles of butterfat separate from the milk and "gather" in a mass. Then we have butter. "The LaGrange Creamery" was a co-operative organization and the creamery, or factory, was the brick building which still stands on the west side of Todd Hill Road about a quarter of a mile from Route 55 at "Apple Valley". The head of the company was Henry Hoyt, a member of the firm of "Cheney and Hoyt, Grocers". Their store stood on the north side of Main Street a few doors east of Catharine Street in Poughkeepsie. It was at this store that most of LaGrange butter was sold. The butter was packed at the creamery in crocks holding two, five or ten pounds each, or in wooden firkins which held about 50 pounds each. From the firkins the butter was sold in any quantity the housewife might want. The cream was produced by the Co-op members of dairy farms all around the area, and collected daily by gatherers who visited each farm to pick up and deliver it to the creamery. Three gatherers whom I remember were William Cramer, Robert McConaghy and Peter Cornell. Each producer had what was called a "Cooley Creamer" which was a big water tight tank. It had a metal rack inside the tank that could be raised and lowered by a crank. The creamer cans were placed on the rack, the tank was filled with water and cooled with ice. Morning and night, batches of milk were put in the cans and the next day the collectors raised the cans from the tank, drew off the milk through a spiggot at the bottom of the can, measured the amount of cream by means of a narrow graduated window on the side of the can. After the cream had been registered on a talley sheet, it was dumped into an ordinary milk can and transferred to the factory. The skimmed milk was left on the farm. At the creamery, the cream was held at near 70°F. and allowed to sour, then it was placed in the churn. The churn was a cradle type, oval in shape, mounted on grooved wheels which fitted a track of circular form, low in the middle and raised at each end so that the churn rode back and forth. It had a vertical motion at each end. After the butter "came", the buttermilk was drawn off to an outside tank and the butter was lifted out and placed on the "working table" where the remaining buttermilk was worked out by rolling and folding. Salt was added and the butter packed in crocks or firkins. It was ready for sale. The farmers usually kept the buttermilk which was fed to the pigs. 88
