Instructions: Every time I buy a gallon of milk - or my cottage cheese, sour cream, butter or buttermilk - Im surprised at how little it costs. Thats because I remember the time and effort it took on our farm to produce all of these foods.

Milking was the most miserable job. We had six Holsteins that we milked by hand twice a day, at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m., every day with no regard for weekends or holidays.

We sat on a three-legged stool at the rear end of the cow - and it was easy for a cow to kick the bucket and the milker if she didnt like the process. Once the pail was full, with 2 to 5 gallons, we emptied it into a 10-gallon milk can.

It took a well-muscled person to haul those cans into the cooling room!

My younger brother, George, made any chore fun. With milking, it involved one of our cats.

The best cat was Mrs. Bacon, a black-and-white beauty. George trained her to enjoy fresh milk. Whenever he started toward the cows with milk bucket in hand, Mrs. Bacon would appear. George taught her to open her mouth so he could direct a stream of milk directly from the cow into her mouth. On the rare days George didnt do the milking, Mrs. Bacon issued an irritating cry.

In the cooling room, the fresh milk was poured into the 5-foot-high separator, and someone - usually the youngest in the family - had to turn its handle. The separator had two spouts, one for cream and one for the skimmed milk that drained into milk cans.

If a family didnt have a separator, the milk could stand about a half-day, and the cream naturally came to the top.

The worst part of using the separator was cleaning its 30 discs. They were greasy and had to be washed after each use, and our homemade soap was not great on grease.

Before we delivered the cream to the nearby creamery, we took enough out to make butter. Usually, the youngest person in the house churned the butter, we had a barrel churn. We turned the handle that rotated four wooden paddles until the cream turned to butter, then drained off the buttermilk, which we drank or used in baking. When my mother planned to entertain, some butter went into decorative molds; otherwise, it was made into a ball.

We poured the skimmed milk from the separator into flat pans that were kept in the warming oven until the milk soured enough to become thick. We then heated it slowly on the stove top until the whey separated from the curd. Then we strained the curds through a cloth bag to make dry cottage cheese. My mother mixed it with fresh berries for a salad or with cream (similar to store-bought cottage cheese), or she molded it into a ball.

Of course, the dairy business was not done. We had to hitch up a horse and deliver the milk to our local creamery. In later years, trucks came along to pick it up.

While todays milk products are great, I miss some that we produced. When I make sour cream pie with commercial sour cream, it doesnt taste quite the same - its unique tart flavor is missing.

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