Dale will return in time for the 4:30 p.m. milking, sterilization of bottles, bottling, and refrigeration. It's a long day. "Some mornings I oversleep," Mrs. Graham admits. "Why, yesterday I didn't wake up until four-thirty in the morning." She had gone to bed at seven o'clock the evening before.
While cows still demand twice-daily milkings, farmers now use mechanized milking machines which attach to the cows' udders and, through a system of pipes, deposit the milk in an on-site storage vat. Rather than delivering cans or bottles door-to-door by burros or horse-drawn carts, farmers sell their milk to wholesalers who pasteurize and package the milk before selling it to groceries. There are some farmers who milk small herds, but most now milk large herds of more than one hundred cows.
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To find these and other farming images and stories, search the American Memory collections on dairy and other types of agriculture, like tobacco. Your search on dairy will find the 1919 Yiddish playscript "Tevieh the dairyman" by Sholem Aleichem.
- Search across the American Memory Photos and Prints on the term dairy cattle or dairy cow to see a wide variety of images. Among these is Marion Post Wolcott's September 1941 image of Dairy Cattle and Stock Barn on Farm near Lexington, Nebraska, which is one of the black and white photos of the collection FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945.
- Search on the term ice cream in Washington As It Was, 1923-1959 to see a variety of creamy treats from the Colonial Ice Cream Company. See, for example, ice cream forms number XX, and number XXIII.
- Buckaroos in Paradise, 1945-1982 presents documentation of a Nevada cattle-ranching community, with a focus on the family-run Ninety-Six Ranch. Browse a list of the collection's topics which includes such items as branding, calves, and buckaroos.
