Milking on Uncle Adin's Farm; the Many Uses of Outing Flannel

Thanks to Aunt CB and to Tom Kinsella for the writing and research put into this posting. Very interesting!

Outing flannel is a cotton fabric, closely woven and with a fleecy side to it. Flannel is made from wool, and used for clothing, etc., keeps one nice and warm, but is more expensive, therefore, cotton flannel came into being. Children's pajamas are made from it, and men's and women's sport shirts are also. I gave Dad a cotton flannel shirt for Christmas, and I'll bet you have one or two in your closet.

When Adin was milking cows and selling the milk to the creamery in Center Lisle (1920-1950) certain rules were state mandated by the Health Dept. The milking area had to be kept extra clean, mucked out after each milking, etc. (This was before milking stations came into being, where the cows walked into position, were milked, and walked out of the barn. This milk is channeled into plastic tubes and thence into refrigerated tanks.) Adin's milking machine was a machine with a handle, which when placed between two cows, served both at once. The milk flowed into a cylinder that was hand carried to the milk cans in a clean area and emptied into them.

Here is where the outing flannel came in! A metal milk strainer was placed over the open milk cans. This strainer had two parts to it--a bottom band that unscrewed from the top funnel. A piece of outing flannel was fitted into the bottom band, then screwed back into the top funnel part of the strainer, with the flannel serving as an additional strainer to clarify the milk of any debris or whatever. Health laws stated that this outing flannel square (10" x 10"?) had to be changed each milking and a new one used. As cows are milked every twelve hours, if you shipped two cans of milk to the creamery, one for each milking, you used up two squares per day. These could be purchased at the feed store where other farm items were also sold. Because of the time involved in cutting your own, and the inexpensive price of a package, most farmers bought them already cut.

Most farmers' wives, immediately after the squares were removed and replaced with a milk can cover, to be refrigerated in the milk cooler until the creamery truck came, doused each square in cold water, to remove milk protein and hung them up to dry -- when they had a load, washed them in the old agitator washing machine, hung them to dry again and stacked them for later use.

Their uses were legion! Three to four, together and stitched in a pattern and encased in a pretty piece of cotton fabric, made a pot holder. Several of these, sewn together in strips, say six or eight across (60" or 80") and twice that down, made a decent quilt. If you wished, you could dye the squares separately or after sewing together, but that took precious time so Grandma Baker seldom did. She did use them sometimes as inserts for quilts. Normally cotton batting (like a layer of cotton balls) was used as an insert between two layers of quilted cotton or woolen material. However, the batting, whether woolen or cotton, cost money, so Grandma usually used milk cloth strainers sewn together. She made many quilts from just plain squares sewn together and, putting two sheets of them together, tied in each corner and there!!

Another common use was for babies! Washcloths, inserts in diapers, sew two to four together and in a square and make a towel to dry babies -- they had a million uses. My mother used them on us I'm sure, and she gave us each some when we had our families.

When Uncle Harold was married and working in a fruit packing company, he broke his arm, most likely trying to fix machinery. Able to still use a sewing machine because at that time they used foot treadles, he sewed together outing flannel into quilts just as Grandma Baker had done in her time. He kept the quilts and used them for his girls.