OT-Milk Wells

GarryinNC · Jan 7, 2013

I was talking to my dad over the weekend, he is 87, and we got to talking about people around here( piedmont NC ) that had what were called 'milk wells'. They were simply a dry hole, about 12 inches or so diameter, about 10-12 feet into the ground. Most had a little 'dumb waiter' apparatus and a real small well house covering the well. Folks used the 50-some ground temp to make milk, butter, etc. keep longer.

My dad's family had what was called a 'spring box'. It was just a wooden box with a trough and holes in the bottom that sat in a spring near where it came out of the ground. The cool water flowing through helped keep the dairy products from spoiling as quick. They also had a home made ice box with hollow sides filled with saw dust for insulation and lined with thin metal.

The got the electricity and a refrigerator in 1939.

Anyone have memories of these?

Garry

GeneMO · Jan 7, 2013

Wonder how they got a hole that deep, that was only 12' or so?

My tractor post hole digger has a 12' auger, and will go 4'. After that it would be pretty hard diggin.

I guess some sor of old hand operated auger with a long shaft.

gene

keh · Jan 7, 2013

Somthing similat is at the Carl Sandburg house in Flat Rock, NC. Mrs Sandburg raised prize dairy goats and t ey had a speing house to cool the milk. It is a strong, concrete building with a concrete shallow tank 6 or 8 inches deep and possibly 8 x 10 feet across. A spring feed stream comes down the hillside, fills the tank, and overflows out one side. No thermostat to adjust, LOL.

KEH

Anonymous-0 · Jan 7, 2013

Had a similar cold box or artesian well flowing through a cement box to keep our perishables cool in Rudyard, Michigan (upper peninsula) back in the 1940's.

Adirondack case guy · Jan 7, 2013

They were probably hand dug the same way water wells were dug and laid with stone walls years back. Google (hand dug wells)
Loren, the Acg.

leej · Jan 7, 2013

Toeper than a standard post hole digger, we unscrewed the T handle fixture ,exstended it with
a 3/4 or 1 inch threaded pipe reinstalled the
T bar fixture and continue on digging. This was done only if we needed to go deeper than say 3 1/2 feet. ggp

Walt Davies · Jan 7, 2013

Grampa had what he called a cooler in the kitchen it was a
very small room that had screen on the bottom and top. It
stayed cool enem in the summer.
I have seen others in very olf houses since then. They work
very good for butter milk and veggies.
Walt

Wesley Stephens · Jan 7, 2013

There used to be a little "dairy" building here that was at the bottom of a ravine where there is a spring for keeping milk cool. My grandfather said electricity came here in the mid 40's. They already had indoor plumbing, though because they had a ram working from one of the many springs around. The water table is high in this area, even right along the 40' drop off to the Cape Fear River floodplain. We are about 40 miles up from Wilmington and maybe 60 from the mouth of the river at Southport. Our houses and barns are along the edge of the hill and there are springs everywhere when you get close to the bottom of the hill. We can still put down a 20' well and get plenty of water, but everyone uses deep wells now. We have a 4" that we used for our former nursery that's about 240' and mine is 176'. Lots of limestone bedrock, so lots of mineral taste in the water.

GarryinNC · Jan 7, 2013

We also wondered about boring the hole. They might not have even been 12 inches. Maybe 8-10 inches. Dad has a near perfect memory, my cousin says that if dad does't remember it, it did't happen! He does not recall too many milk wells around here but thinks they were about this size. He thinks most folks had ice boxes by the time he was old enough to remember things. He does knows of two homes that had them at one time.

Things like this have always fascinated me for some reason. Any old time stuff.

GarryinNC · Jan 7, 2013

We also wondered about boring the hole. They might not have even been 12 inches. Maybe 8-10 inches. Dad has a near perfect memory, my cousin says that if dad does't remember it, it did't happen! He does not recall too many milk wells around here but thinks they were about this size. He thinks most folks had ice boxes by the time he was old enough to remember things. He does knows of two homes that had them at one time.

Things like this have always fascinated me for some reason. Any old time stuff.

Brian Dan · Jan 7, 2013

My grandfather used to use a well pit with cold water in it to cool and store his milk cans in.
He would lower them down with a rope with a hook on it. He would hook onto A handle and pull them back out when the can truck came to pick them up.
A hole lot of work.

Anonymous-0 · Jan 7, 2013

On my uncle's dairy, all of his milk cans of milk were cooled in a spring fed concrete milk cooler until he was forced to change to bulk milk pickup. It worked great and that milk cooler was the best when we had to cool a watermelon for end of picnic consumption. All of the water fron the spring to the house and barn 300-400 feet away, was carried through solid lead pipe.

showcrop · Jan 7, 2013

(quoted from post at 16:00:52 01/07/13)
Somthing similat is at the Carl Sandburg house in Flat Rock, NC. Mrs Sandburg raised prize dairy goats and t ey had a speing house to cool the milk. It is a strong, concrete building with a concrete shallow tank 6 or 8 inches deep and possibly 8 x 10 feet across. A spring feed stream comes down the hillside, fills the tank, and overflows out one side. No thermostat to adjust, LOL.

KEH

My grandfather had a similar one. It was still in use when I first went into it about 55 years ago. The forty quart cans were immersed nearly to the top, and it probably held about eight cans.

VADAVE · Jan 7, 2013

My grandfather's farm is western Maryland had a spring house that sat on top of a spring. Had a concrete casing about 4 X 8 feet and about 2 feet deep; the spring flowed into it and an overflow pipe carried the water out to a creek. Kept anything they wanted cool for a long time. Still works today.

Tramway Guy · Jan 7, 2013

Our 'milk house' had a rectangular concrete tank that we set
the milk cans in. There was a pump jack that pumped directly
from the well into the tank after milking to cool the milk till
pickup by the milk hauler. The milk tank water outlet went into
a stock tank for the cows. Simple really. Dad never went to
Grade 'A' milk; he would have had to install a bulk tank for
that. This was back in the early '60's...

Janicholson · Jan 7, 2013

Exactly the same setup near our 25 cow barn. Hand milked white washed. Aermotor brand Jack. I still hear its sound in my head. Gramps and his sons quit the dairy in 1955 from those same reasons. Just no profit from massive work. Barn and power not really modernizable, and that decided the issue. Jim

JayinNY · Jan 7, 2013

Never heard of that, but I seen a beer well! My buddy across
the street from me, has an old guy that ownes 80 acres of
woods behind him. My friend was outta work 2 years ago, so
the old guy, whose 80 asked Joe to do some work in the
woods. Well I stoped up one day and we were walking
around, Joe showed me this dug well, lined with rocks. I'm
looking at it and I see a string, I could tell it was fresh, so I
said what's this string doing here? He replied, that's the old
guys beer! I said no, I pulled up the string and sure enought
there was a six pack tied to it! Lol,

BANDITFARMER · Jan 7, 2013

We had the same style milk house in use till 1968 and was spring fed. I still remember all those cold days milking by hand in the morning before school. Oh the good old days! Bandit

RMinVa · Jan 7, 2013

We used a spring here. Had to walk down about 25
ft. from the edge of the pasture and about 100
yards from the house. One way in and one way out.
Banks are so steep can't walk on 3 sides of it.
This spring still runs today. Kept milk,butter
milk, watermelons and canteloupe in there. In the
winter that's where I watered the mules about
30ft. below the spring. Every day before I went to
school.

We didn't get power till 1948. My Dad had a new
tractor after WWII(Army intelligence, south
pacific 4.5 years) and he used it to pull the line
down our highway. Most of it was pulled in by
mules. Half the length of the road by my house was
paved in 1951 and the other half in 1987. My Dad
said he saw the main road being built (RT. 40) by
prisoners with pics and shovels and ball and
chains in 1931.

We had running water in the house in 1952 with a
shower in the basement. Got the bathroom added in
1968. I was in the 4th grade before I saw an
indoor bathroom.

scotc · Jan 7, 2013

Our "Old milkhouse" (it was the old milkhouse) was block and had a square dirt patch in the one outside corner, where the building widened out. It had been a pit for milk cans, and I guess there had been a pump near it for running water into it.

GarryinNC · Jan 7, 2013

I am really enjoying all the replies so far. Thank you very much! Even The Great Google had nothing on this arcane inquiry.

I love hearing about the 'old days'.

larry@stinescorners · Jan 7, 2013

this is the spring house my neighbor in pa has,they dont use it anymore,but it does have troughs in it,They use to use the water from it for their farm,but they had a well drilled not too long ago

Paul from MI · Jan 7, 2013

My cousin cooled his milk in a trough that was filled from a well, then overflowed into a stock tank for the cows. He used it until he quit milking in the late 60's. Cans of course. The well was pumped with a pump jack and motor that was in an open shed by the trough. I remember rigging up a long V-belt to the belt pulley on his old Farmall H to run the pump jack when the power was out.

Rick Kr · Jan 7, 2013

My first farmhouse had a milkhouse. Roughly a 10x10 building with a concrete pit on one side. Had an overflow pipe which drained out the the creek. With the Artesian well the water was COLD!! I am looking for a picture.

Being the farm hadnt been used since the 1950s, my friends and I discovered you could get three kegs in there. Ahh to be in my 20s again. Friend worked for the DOT, made a sign up to change the name to the "Keg House" from the milk house.

Rick

ShadetreeRet · Jan 7, 2013

The milk well is a new one on me. Seen lots of spring houses. Until I was 9 we lived just west of High Point, (NC) We had an ice box, the upper left compartment, which was almost half the height of the box, held a 50lb. block of ice. Directly underneath was a compartment and the right side had one long door the entire height of the box with shelves inside. The ice company in High Point ran a delivery truck and twice a week they came by and delivered ice. That area did not get electricity until about 1949 or '50.

ShadetreeRet · Jan 7, 2013

Garry, I grew up in the piedmont section also. If you care to, shoot me an e-mail and let me know about where you are located.

Nebraska Cowman · Jan 8, 2013

Spring box, That is what dad's folks had. Dad said
that as a boy it was his job to stir the milk to
cool it faster. (It had to be below a certain temp
before the plant would accept it) By the time I
could remember the spring house was gone. The
neighbor to the south had a spring house still
standing. When I was a kid I would get a drink
there. Don't know nothing about milk wells but
there is a place where I run cattle there is an
open cistern box where the water flows through
from the well (or did in years past) I assume that
was for cooling.

W_B · Jan 8, 2013

My place now has an old spring house laid up in hand cut stone with a trough in it to place the milk or whatever and is next to the well we are still using. Timbers are all hand hewn and has wood shake roofing under the current tin. The previous owner of the place said it dated to pre-Civil War era, but he didn't know how old it really was. It was there when his people bought the farm sometime after the war. Would like to restore if completely someday when the financed permit.

OT-Milk Wells

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