Selling Cream to Swift & Company
When I was just a little kid my Mom used to sell cream to Swift & Company. We had a cow and she had more cream than she could use. She would collect the extra cream and put it in a large bucket. When it got nearly full she would put a big lid on it and set the bucket in a little red wagon and I would pull it up to Swift & Company, which was about maybe a half mile up the street from us. My sister would sometimes help me pull the wagon. It was kind of tricky pulling it without turning the wagon over, we had to be careful not to do that!
The Swift man would take the bucket and empty it into a big vat and then steam clean the bucket. They would do some testing on the cream and then about half an hour later he would bring me the money for the cream. I think they tested for the level of fat in the cream or something like that.
After some time they told us that we had to have a certain kind of bucket, like the one in the picture above, so we had to buy one of the buckets to sell the cream with. I am shocked that they would buy cream from just anybody as they did then. We never got rich from it but the money did help out because we were on a very limited budget at that time.
I am sure that now Swift would not do business that way. Everything has to be tested and done in a certain way. But at that time it was a Godsend for us. But then, who nowadays has a cow and wants to sell cream to anybody? Maybe the big dairy farms but not the average person like we were then.
I think of us selling the cream to Swift's every time I buy sour cream at the grocery store.
posted by kyra lafain @ 1/24/2009 12:30:00 PM
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