The Dairy Industry - Work on the Farm
Dairy farming involved all the members of the family and everyone was expected to lend a hand to get all the jobs done, including milking the cows, separating the cream and feeding the calves and other animals.
During the 1950s and 1960s the small local butter factories closed down and were replaced by larger factories with modern machinery and methods of production. Some dairy farms were turned into beef cattle farms, encouraged by government initiatives and the rise in beef cattle prices, and other farmers changed to vegetable production. Once the United Kingdom entered the European Economic Community in 1972 the market for Australian butter was greatly reduced, another factor in the downturn of the dairy industry in the Tweed.
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Alice's Story
“We worked together. Daph and I worked together. We milked. I milked eight [cows], we always had our share of cows. Daph milked more than the usual. Get up real early and Mum’d say ‘see how many we can get out before the sun hits Mt Warning’. We’d all go like mad.
“Then you had to clean the bails, separate [the cream]. One’d separate till they got tired, then the other’d take over. Hand milked, washed the separator, wash the cans out, wash the buckets out, feed the calves. Someone had to light the fire to boil the copper up. Dad used to feed the pigs as a rule.”
Alice Lange, who grew up near Uki remembers life on the dairy farm.
Tweed River Regional Museum Research Collection
Listen to Alice - 298 KB (mp3 file)
Listen to Alice - 239 KB (mp3 file)
Did You Know?
One of the reasons dairy farmers in the Tweed started to switch to beef cattle farming and growing crops was that margarine was introduced as a substitute for butter in the 1960s, and became very popular. Because people were eating less butter, not as much milk and cream was required and the farmers couldn’t continue to earn a living from their dairy cattle.
It is recommended that we eat margarine because it’s made from vegetable oils and has less saturated fats and cholesterol than butter, which is made from animal fat (the cream in cow’s milk.)
What would you use this object for?
Try This
Look at the object in the photo.
- has it been handmade or made by a machine?
- what is it made of?
- what do you think goes inside it?
- what adjectives would you use to describe it?
What do you think it is?
Paint stirrer
Butter churn
Tomato sauce maker
Incorrect. This is actually a butter churn.
More information: Butter churns made it possible for dairy farmers to make butter to use at home. Because there was no refrigeration butter couldn’t be kept for long, so it was made in small amounts every few days.
Correct! This is a butter churn.
More information: Butter churns made it possible for dairy farmers to make butter to use at home. Because there was no refrigeration butter couldn’t be kept for long, so it was made in small amounts every few days.
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