Forgotten stashes of dark yellow butter are sometimes found buried in bogs in Ireland, preserved for thousands of years, secreted away in times of plenty, to bide the maker over times of scarcity or hunger.
Though a thousand years old, or more, the butter is still edible and has, I am told, a unique flavour of the bog it was buried in. I don't doubt that!
(Photo is of bog butter discovered in Galway, none the worse for having spend two thousand years under the bog).
They say that the butter takes the flavour of the grass or plants in the field the cow grazes in also. And I don't doubt that either.
(Photo; This is a leather firkin or barrel that was found a few years ago in a bog in Kildare)Today, Kerrygold, the butter brand owned by Irish dairy farmers, has become the first Irish food brand to reach the momentous milestone of exceeding an annual retail value of $1 billion of exports. Be it ever so humble, butter pays the Irish handsomely, even today.
We Irish have had a long love-affair with our butter for thousands of years. During the 18th and 19th centuries we infected every corner of the world with our butter infatuation and an unlikely industry sprang up. One of our biggest exports for over two hundred years was Irish Country or salted butter. Cork, a bustling port, had a 'Butter Market' or 'Butter Exchange', exporting butter of a very high quality to all parts of the British Empire from around 1700. Cork, a major shipping port, controlled 66% or Irish butter exports to Europe and 80% to America and especially to the Caribbean.
Butter was transported to Cork by horse and cart from as far away as Limerick and Kerry to the Cork market for export on ships. Cork merchants supplied much of the British Empire with staples, salted beef fn pork, salted fish, and salted butter. Farm-made butter was transported by farmers by horse cart to the market for sale. Hundreds of carts made long journeys every week to sell butter through the Butter Exchange. The road from Killarney to Cork is called 'the butter road' for this reason.
Some butter buyers bought up locally-produced butter in the far-flung outlying towns, like Dingle, Listowel and Caherciveen, too far for a farmer to drive a horse and cart in one day. These were unofficial butter markets like the one in the photograph. The same happened in Clare and Tipperary and as far north as Galway, Donegal and Sligo.
The men milked the cows, but the women made the butter. It was a laborious job, loading the separated cream from fresh milk into recently sterilised wooden churns and turning or pounding the churned cream, to separate the fat form the skimmed milk, and make butter.
There were lots of 'pisheogs' or superstitions attached to churning. If a stranger entered a house while churning was going on he or she had to lend a hand or they would be accused of 'stealing the butter'.
There were churning songs and rhymes too, that went with the ritual.
Milk had a short shelf life, of maybe 3 or 4 days. Butter could last a year or longer. Salted butter could last a decade. Selling home-made butter was the only way many farmers survived, fed their families and paid their rent. Butter moment was the staple of the 19th century farm.
Butter jobbers (middlemen-buyers) would buy the butter locally from the farmers at these local markets, without much competition, setting the price as they saw fit, and no doubt getting a good bargain. That bulk-bought butter was then carted in wooden casks or firkins (a firkin is a 1/4 barrel, with a volume of 10.8 gallons), to Cork, where the butter was graded by quality and sold on for a profit for the middle-man.
Unfortunately by the late 19th century butter production had been mechanised and standardised in much of the world and the market for Irish butter dwindled. Centrifuge-separated blended milk-fat made a more standard butter, that was less salty and had less moisture. Salty butter went out of fashion. New packaging, indeed individual pounds of butter were packed and branded. The old firkin measure fell out of favour for the smaller, lighter, branded packaging.
By 1894 a co-operative movement was founded in Cork, the IAOS (Irish Agricultural Organisation Society) that would revolutionize dairy production in Ireland and provide the farmer with a fair price for milk. The immediate effect of the co-ops was that locally-made butter began to die out and big co-op dairies began collecting milk from farmers for the industrial production of milk, butter, cheese etc.
The Cork Butter Exchange closed in 1924. It was located in the building called 'The Firkin Crane', a beautiful still extant building, erected in 1855. It was a rotunda or round, domed building, that housed the crane or weighing scales that was used to measure the quantity of butter in each 'firkin' or cask.
Butter made from the milk of Kerry cows, was famed for that particular cow's high milk-fat content and deep yellow colour. Kerry's golden butter was the preferred or 'gold standard' for butter all over the world for two hundred years or more, and was sold at a premium.
Kerry Foods branded their premium and very popular butter pat as 'Kerry Gold', and the rest is history. We still love our butter, though the cholesterol scare has frightened many away from one of our oldest and healthiest foods.
Firkins of butter ready for export at the Butter Exchange in Cork
A wooden firkin, or quarter barrel, or 9 imperial gallons. Butter was sold by the firkin, which weighed 56 pounds (25 Kilograms).
My favourite treat? Piping-hot new season potatoes, still in their jackets, swimming in melted butter. One big golden mush of paradise!
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