Enjoy a glass of Buttermilk

If you’re having stomach problems we have a lot of options for medicine and care these days.  That’s not always been the case but our mountain ancestors had solutions for their problems nonetheless.  Buttermilk was a favorite medicine.

Of course buttermilk is what’s left in the churn after you’ve made butter.  True buttermilk is not at all like the cultured stuff you can find in a store today. However, they are both beneficial.

Today’s cultured buttermilk is great because it has live cultures added, just like yogurt.  These microorganisms help the naturally-occurring bacteria in your stomach which is there to digest food, produce vitamins and trigger immune responses.  There are also bad bacteria and cultures in yogurt and buttermilk fight against those.

We established that old fashioned, homemade buttermilk doesn’t have anything added to it.  Making butter and therefore making buttermilk is really easy. Start with whole milk, give it a good long shake then strain out the solid butter and what’s left is the buttermilk.  Nothing is added – except what the good Lord adds.

Amazingly, those naturally added “ingredients” were the reason that homemade buttermilk has long been used medicinally.  Butter can be made from either sweet milk or sour.   My grandmas would always offer you a glass of “sweet milk” to differentiate from the buttermilk.  It’s just milk that hasn’t turned yet.

However, everyone on the mountain always thought you could only make butter from sour milk.  As the milk turns, the natural bacteria in the milk begins to ferment and that makes it easier to churn and makes the butter keep longer – both of which may account for why the old folks wanted to use sour milk.  The added benefit are those “cultures” that they couldn’t have named yet they counted on them to cure stomach troubles.

Now some people just enjoy the taste of buttermilk – as some enjoy yogurt.  I can’t help but wonder if that earlier generation appreciated the taste or drank it simply for their health?

How do you eat buttermilk?

Strange Marker

I found this article from the Monterey Dispatch printed in the mid 1980’s and found it fascinating so I wanted to share…

What is This Strange Marker?

Shortly after the end of the last century, a worker along a section of what was once the pioneer road through Middle Tennessee, The Walton Road, accidentally discovered markings under a heavy layer of moss growing over a huge stone.  The chance of seeing much markings under such a growth of moss was remote in itself.  The worker carefully removed the moss and cleaned the area using acid and was startled to discover the carving of an Indian’s head along with other symbols.

A close observation reveals the head of an Indian, an arrow, a crooked mark, and two dots on either side of the crooked mark.  The head of the Indian measures some nine inches across.  The stone was removed from its original site and taken to a youth camp where it still may be seen today.  The mystery of the stone still lingers!

Who carved the image and why?  Was it carved as a hoax?  Does it mark the burial site of some important person or persons?  Does it mark the site of buried treasure?  Why the Indian?  Where did the arrow point?  What of the two dots and the crooked mark?  The answer to these questions are as far removed from man as the one who carved it so long ago!

I hope you found this as fascinating as I did – but of course it left me with more questions than answers!  There’s not even an author’s byline nor is the youth camp named where the stone is available. 

Are you wondering if that unnamed worker carefully documented where he found it and which direction it was pointing?  Does it remind you of the strangely carved stone I shared here some time back?

Soap Makin’ per Callie Melton

The following is from an article written by Callie Melton for the Standing Stone Dispatch in the early 1980’s.  I present it verbatim.

Soap making was a full day’s work and it just didn’t start on any day you up and thought about making it.  You had to look ahead and figure out the next time the moon would full… then you set the day, for if you made the soap on the waning of the moon it would all dry up to nothing.  All winter the meat scraps had been carefully saved in a big oak box in the smokehouse.  It is true that we used all of the pig but the squeal… soap making proved that. 

The night before you were going to make soap, bucket after bucket of water had to be carried from the rain barrel and poured in the ash hopper to leach out the lye.  Then, the next morning right after breakfast, the big was kettle was set up and filled with water also from the rain barrel… you had to have soft water to make good soap and leech out lye.

A fire was put under the kettle, and while the water was getting hot, the women were busy getting the meat scraps ready.  When the water was boiling, the lye was put in.  You kept adding the lye until you could swish a feather from a chicken’s wing through the water two or three times, and then when you pulled it through your fingers it would slip… slipping meant that all the feather part would slip off from the shaft.  Now that the lye water was strong enough, you began putting the meat scraps in.

You put in a handful at a time, stirring all the time with the soap stick…the soap stick was a stout stick made from a limb of a sassafras bush.  The sap from the Sassafras made your soap smell good.   When you stirred, you always stirred clock-wise, for if you didn’t stir your soap right it wouldn’t set… and a woman was judged not only by the way her young’uns acted, but also by the kind of soap she made.  You added the meat scraps a handful at a time until the lye would not eat up anymore.  Then you stirred your soap carefully and cooked it slowly until it began to get thick.  Now the fire had to be raked out from under the kettle, and the soap let cool.  When the soap was cod, you covered the kettle with wide boards to keep out the dew or rain until morning.  The next morning you cut the soap out in blocks, and put it on wide planks in the smokehouse to cure.  Good soap was hard and creamy smooth when it was cured, with not bits or pieces of uneaten meat, and it lathered up good when you washed with it… Soap you took a bath with was made from butter or lard and was whiter and finer and you always stirred it with a fresh sassafras stick.