Pius Heinzelmann was the last properly-trained dairy farmer in our village. he was master in the dairy — or as we say in North Germany — in the Meierei. Looking competent in his uniform and hat band to which he was entitled he would stand on the high platform to receive the milk cans just brought on the farmer’s carts to the sound of loud rattling. From the scales to the centrifuge and the steriliser, the already skimmed, fat- free milk and the good cream ran into separate collecting tubs. The cream ran into the cream bucket. Overnight sour cream was produced with the help of acidification bacteria. Now it could be churned in the large butter barrel by constant rotating, which took 1 to 11/2 hours. Our Pius made first-rate sourcream butter without salt and with only 18 % water. This became the recognized trademark of German butter. 

Today there are mostly only large co-operative dairies which use the modern process of sweet cream butter. But the competition has already started up. Our EEC milk surplus production has given resourceful farmers’ wives the idea of making farmer’s butter themselves again — by hand, with the old butter barrel from wartime and their granny’s era. Our Pius learnt his trade like this and is showing here how it works, and doesn’t it taste delicious, this homemade farmer’s butter?