Oh for the love of butter! Well, Spring Encampment was a blast and my main employment was in the making (and cleaning) of butter. Sam and her sister Marci were my main helpers. Here's how it works.
I churned the butter for about an hour. Depending on the temperature outside, it takes anywhere from 15 minutes to and hour and a half (from my own experience) to make the butter separate from the butter milk.
Luckily, I had plenty of friends to keep me company while I churned. The giant apron I'm wearing was made with the sole purpose of making butter with it. It's wide skirt completely covers my petticoats and the bib keeps the butter cream from splashing up on my jacket front. Making butter isn't the cleanest occupation. ;)
When we finished, I scooped the butter out and ran water over it in the colander, until the water drained out clear. We then filled the bigger mold (in the background) and began to fill the smaller mold which Sam is holding. The bigger one can be seen in the background. The bowl in front is an 18th century pottery colander. We used it to wash the butter.
Pushing it out!
Popping the larger butter cake out of the mold. Marci was such a good helper!
Releasing the first mold. This one was kinda messy as the larger mold wasn't as good quality as the smaller one.
Getting the second layer out of the mold. This one was trickier because the suction was better. Sam's other sister, Vanessa is in the foreground.
Putting the two layers together...
Molding the butter.
Rubbing the two butter cakes together...
Picking up left over pieces of butter to fill in the cracks...
Here Sam explains to Marci how the butter mold works.
Smoothing extra butter around the edges...
Marci learned a lot about churning that day..
TADA! Butter! Here we are draining excess water off the plate before replacing the butter cake.
Getting all the butter off our hands...
Cleaning the butter molds. That's Lee in the background.
Washing the dishes...and ourselves! :D
Drying off our hands on my huge butter churning apron...
Mumsie had made several loaves of bread in the bake oven and between my butter and her bread, we fed plenty of people that weekend! By Sunday, the butter was entirely gone!
Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed that little instruction as to 18th century butter making!
This the bake oven up at the house. From left to right: Janessa, our friend Evan, and Mumsie. My mom runs the bake oven and we do make bread, cookies, biscuits, cornbread, cakes and cobbler all inside. It works quite well and the food is of course delicious!
I borrowed this pic from my friend Jessica over at