Presque Isle: The Star City

Albert’s father worked many jobs. One was as a dairy farm inspector while my grandpa was in high school. Albert was old enough to help his father do the inspections once a month. While his father went to one farm, he and his brothers Dale, Keith, and Philip would go to another one. They could get two farms inspected at once.
The men would go from New Sweden to Ashland to do these inspections. They would do two milkings on one farm one in the evening and one the next morning. When they went to Oxbow, they would spend the night. In Oxbow, the farm owners also had two boys Albert’s age. When Albert went there, he would always play with them and their horses. He loved to stay in that house because the bed had so many warm blankets on it.
To do the inspections, they would put the milk in pails and weigh it. Then they would take their samples. The men would put acids in the milk samples to see how much butterfat was in the milk. Then they would multiply the amount of butter fat by the pounds of milk that could be made from that the farmers could determine how profitable they would be. Some farms had as few as a dozen cows, and some had as many as sixty. Even though there were many dairy farms then, now there are almost none.