West Bend, WI – For over 15 years, Dave Bohn wrote down memories of his childhood growing up on the family farm just south of West Bend on Hwy P. While Dave is no longer with us, he still had more stories he wrote that he wanted to share. His hope was that his writings would preserve the often-overlooked stories of ordinary farmers and everyday farm life in rural Washington County during the Great Depression through the eyes of a local farm boy.
When the milk strikes of 1933 occurred, I was a little kid, but I do have some memory of it.
The Milk Strike occurred when the farmers were trying to get more money for their milk. It was during the Great Depression and the farmers weren’t getting much money for their milk.
In 1933, there was a sudden drop in the price farmers were getting for milk. It was about half of what they got the previous year. So, the farmers went on strike and didn’t sell their milk. They tried to convince other farmers to do the same.
During the strike, Dad kept some of our milk for our family. We made cottage cheese, butter, buttermilk, as much as we possibly could. I think Dad probably had to dump the rest of the milk we didn’t use.
While I was just a little kid when the strikes occurred, I do remember that Mom never made butter other than during the Milk Strike. I don’t know, but I suppose Mom was trying to use up some of the milk. She gave some away to relatives and friends.
When Mom made butter, it was our job, as the kids, to turn the butter churn. Mom would put the churn on a chair outside and we would stand next to the churn and turn it. The wood barrel was oblong and about 14” in diameter and 2’ in length. It was shaped like a small beer barrel with slightly tapered ends, kind of like a football.
There was a hand crank on the middle of the barrel that us kids would turn. We had to turn the crank slowly. The crank would make the barrel turn vertically in a circle so the milk would splash from one end of the barrel to the other. The milk splashing from one end of the barrel to the other would make the milk form into butter.
It would take about 15 plus minutes of churning to form the butter. It would create small ½” globs of butter (about like cheese curds) that would float in the water that was a byproduct of the churning process. If you were lucky, you would get half of the milk to turn to butter. It all depended on the amount of cream that was in the milk, as butter is solidified cream.
Back then, the creameries would test the milk for butterfat content. The higher the butterfat, the more a farmer would get paid for his milk at that time.
During the Milk Strike, Dad sided with a little more radical group of farmers in Washington County. They were trying to convince other farmers to join the strike and withhold their milk. This radical group would go at night to a farm that wasn’t participating in the strike and try to convince the farmer to join the strike.
My brother Tom, who was 6 years old at the time, remembered that a car with some neighbors came to our house to get Dad. They knew of a farmer who was taking his milk to a factory that day and they wanted to go make him understand he must not take the milk to the factory and that his milk was going to be dumped on the roadside.
One of the farmers had a shotgun. Tom didn’t know what happened, only that Dad came back a short time later. There was a lot of turmoil going on at the time all over the state of Wisconsin.
After the Milk Strikes ended, there were hard feelings, very much so amongst the farmers in the area between those who participated in the strike and those who did not. There were bitter feelings between neighbors that never healed. There was a lot of talk by our parents and neighbors for years after. I can remember this.
In my opinion, the Milk Strike was not an effective way to increase the price of milk because the strike was not 100% adhered to. Things got better for farmers as the economy improved during the 1930’s when the New Deal was being implemented. But the real improvement for farmers came during WWII.
