Milk Churning and Brown Bread

Martin Monahan 21^st July 2017 Deerpark Social Services Centre, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway

Milk Churning and Brown Bread

Interviewer: Clare Doyle (CD)

Interviewee: Martin Monahan (MM)

CD: And when you were a young lad at home, did you have animals?

MM: We had cows

CD: And did you milk them?

MM: We did. Milked them by hand

CD: Can you milk a cow, can you?

MM: I milked a few cows out on the land

CD: Did you?

MM: I did and they stayed quiet too when I was milking them

CD: Yeah, I’d say that’s a good thing to be able to learn how to do

MM: That’s true alright

CD: And did your father teach you that?

MM: It just came natural to me

CD: You were just able to do it

MM: That’s right, my father used to do it and my mother used to do it and then I tried it and I was able to do it

CD: Yeah, because not everybody can do that

MM: I used to sit down I the field, down on my gudges to milk the cow

CD: And if you had the milk from the cow would you be able to make butter from it, or would your mother ever make butter?

MM: She does, she used to make butter from the milk

CD: And how would you do that? What kind of a churn did you have?

MM: A round sort of a churn…

CD: Was it wooden

MM: Timber and one handle on it

CD: Right

MM: And you put in the milk and start churning

CD: It would take a good long time now to make butter, would it?

MM: It wouldn’t take that long

CD: Would it not? And what would you do, you put the milk in to the churn is it?

MM: Put the milk in and start churning

CD: And you just keep going until…

MM: That’s right, until it gets a bit harder

CD: Right

MM: And take it out of the churn then and there’s some kind of a bat or something, some kind of a…for turning it over and back like that

CD: ok

MM: To make it in shape and then leave it up, leave it in the dairy for a while and tis ready to

CD: You can eat it then straight away?

MM: You can, you an

CD: And what would you eat, would you eat soda bread with it?

MM: Maybe brown bread

CD: Your mother would make brown bread, would she?

MM: That’s what she used to make, bread, brown bread

CD: And how would she, would she have an oven or would she make it in the open fire

MM: No, she’d make it first and then she used to put it into an oven

CD: Aright

MM: Over the fire to cook

CD: That sounds nice

MM: It was