Butter and Wash Tubs

My Dad was reminiscing about the old days when he helped his mom do laundry with an old wringer washing machine and those big galvanized wash tubs. I remember that wringer washer--Gramma was still using it in the 1970s when I was a kid, though by then, she had an electric dryer upstairs.

They lived on a dairy farm in rural northern Wisconsin. At one point, the farmers were on strike. Since they lived on a dairy farm, they had an over-abundance of milk. They skimmed off the cream and put it into the agitator side of the wringer-washer and made their own butter.

Dad said, at one point there was more than 100 pounds of butter in the freezer. That's a lot of butter!