Making Butter

Jean-Francois Millet's 1855
"Woman Churning Butter"
Metropolitan Museum of Art

And now the dairy claims her choicest care,

And half her household find employment there;

Slow rolls the Churn; its load of cloging cream

At once foregoes its quality and name,

From knotty particles first floating wide,

Congealing butter's dashed from side to side;

New milk around, through flowing coolers stray

And snow-white Curd abounds, and wholesome whey;

(excerpt from Robert Bloomfield's The Farmer's Boy, written in 1800)

Sources

Robert Bloomfield's 1800, The Farmer's Boy

Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Robert Bloomfield"
Henry Stephens quotes this passage in his chapter on the making of butter and cheese in The Book of the Farm, Volume III published in 1844

Further Reading

The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2014, "Woman Churning Butter"

Collections Canada 2006 "Women and Their Work in Upper Canada" by Jane Errington
Nick Mika et al, 2000 Black Creek Pioneer Village: Toronto's Living History Village, read page 25 on the process of making butter in the early 19th century