Virtually every farm kitchen had a cream separator in it. We had one just inside the kitchen door. It was my job to carry the full milk pails from the milking barn to the house when I helped Dad milk in the evenings. The milk was poured through a strainer to remove interesting tidbits you probably wouldn't want to know about. I don't remember if our separator was hand crank or electric, but it was probably hand crank. The cream came out the top spout and the skim milk out the bottom. The cream was emptied into cream cans where it soured. Once a week we took the sour cream to the dairy in town to be used for making butter. This cream was often the only source of a few dollars of cash income and was used for groceries and other expenses. The skim milk was used to feed the calves and the hogs. My dad always told me that drinking skim milk would make you bloated like a bloated calf. Not until years later did we ever realize that skim milk is the milk of choice. We had an endless supply of cold whole milk poured into two-quart bottles and an endless supply of fresh whole cream, which I hated. In any event, we never had any problems from drinking unpasteurized milk, but Dad was extremely cautious to check the milk from each cow before it was brought into the house.
