Cushing Creamery History 

An 1899 (not 1889) view of the creamery.  Up the hill is the Thomas Hansen store, later going through many owners including Harvey Olsen.  Now it is a house.  

Can you imagine the ruts and washing on the sandy hill coming to the south and east roads!    

Doc Squirt (Roy Henning) comments on the Cushing Creamery History 1923

We had Polk County in the Dairy Record last week. John Klinka came to bat there with an account of the first creamery at Luck that was sponsored so ably by J. P. Peterson and Nelson Lawson. He got by nicely with his narrative of the Luck creamery, but when he got to telling about the creamery at Cushing and said that Jim Sorensen was the first buttermaker, Jeff Simpson made a protest that we could hear way down here. Just simply can’t fool Jeff. The first butter massager at Cushing was a lady. Her name wasn’t Simpson, but we never got Jeff to tell us what it was. Jim was the second buttermaker and helped materially in making that creamery the splendid success that it is today.

Since working for the Record we have got the dope on a lot of creameries throughout Wis., Minn., and Iowa, and plan on featuring Polk County after a while, and if we don’t hand the Cushing creamery, where for some time we were the Buttermilk King, an extra bouquet we will be shot upon our next invasion of that town. They are quick on the trigger up there and the running shot we would make is their specialty.

Memories of the Cushing Creamery by Phil Iversen 1930s

Phil Iversen grew up in Cushing where his father, Hy Iversen was the Lutheran minister in the 1930s.  He reminisced about the Cushing Creamery.  

Another entertaining business in town was the creamery. Most farms in the area were small dairy farms, small acreage of probably eighty acres because this was just about capacity when farming with horses. There were a couple of tractors, with steel wheels and triangular shaped lugs, in the county but they were expensive, very scarce and raised havoc when driven on the gravel or dirt roads, turning them into something resembling warning "rumble strips" now build along the shoulders of highways. Cows were milked, by hand, early in the morning and again in the evening, after the other farm work was finished. The fresh milk was poured into a machine called a cream separator that separated the lighter weight cream from the milk. The cream and milk were stored in a cool place until early the next morning a truck from the creamery made it's rounds and hauled the cream to town. The milk was somewhat of a byproduct with some used for the household or mixed with ground oats and fed to pigs or chickens.

The cream was transported in large ten or twenty gallon steel milk cans. At the creamery the cans were unloaded from the truck onto a gently sloping conveyor with steel rollers and the cans went through a small door in the side of the building. Inside the milk cans were emptied into one of the several large, wooden, cylindrical butter churns. These chums must have been four or five feet in diameter and eight or ten feet long. As I recall they had a large gear wheel on the end which was driven by a large chain running from the motor. The churns had large wooden paddles inside which caused the milk to splash about as they turned. There was a small window on the side of the churn so the workers could see when butter was forming. It was fun to watch the churns open after hours of turning and see the huge pile of sweet, fresh, soft butter which was scooped out into wooden tubs with a large wooden paddle, not unlike a canoe paddle.

Incidentally, there was no market for the fresh, sweet byproduct of buttermilk and unless someone wanted a free pail it was discharged into a floor drain. Some farmers filled their cream cans with buttermilk and took it home to feed the hogs. The floor drain discharged into a ditch that eventually flowed into the nearest stream and lake. The creamery used a lot of ice and had a large building in back that was filled with ice each winter. The large blocks of ice were packed in sawdust to provide insulation and preserve the ice throughout the summer months.

Thinking about the creamery reminded me of how we obtained milk for our household. Refrigeration was not available for the stores, at least as display cases and cooling was provided by large walk-in, thickly insulated rooms cooled by large blocks of ice. Pasteurization may have been discovered but the process was not utilized for milk, at least in rural areas. Consequently, the grocery stores only handled a small amount of milk and cream because the shelf life was only a day or two.

The larger cities had milkmen who delivered milk each day, but in the small town of Gushing we bought our milk from a dairy farm on the south end of town, almost across the road from our home. This dairyman was the Brenholt family. Mr. Brenholt would fill our milk bottles, insert a round, waxed cardboard cap and place the bottles in a grid like, or compartmented, rack on a large table, on the back screen porch of his house. Each customer had a compartment in the grid where the milk bottles would be stored and each evening the kids from around town would pick up the family milk supply still warm from the cow. During the winter month if we forgot to pick up the milk it would freeze and extrude from the bottle, like toothpaste pressed from the tube, or maybe even break the milk bottle. The milk bottles were manufactured just for the purpose, made of heavy glass, round of one quart in size.

There were also small bottles of pint or one-half pint used for cream. When we picked up the milk we would bring an extra set of empty bottles, with coins in the bottom, to pay for the next days milk supply.

    A dozen members braved the snowstorm and joined the Cushing Cooperative Society board for the 113th  annual meeting December 1st at the Cushing Lutheran Church.   The co-op movement began in Cushing with the building of the 1894 Cushing Co-op Creamery (the first successful cooperative creamery in Polk County) with expansion to a co-op general store and feed mill in 1943.  The store and creamery closed in the 1980s, but the feed mill and grain elevator are prospering.  After a small loss last year, both branches showed small profits.  Sales were $3.8 million for the past year. 

       Cooperatives are owned by the patrons and do not have as a goal a large profit, rather they exist to provide services to their patron owners.  The annual meeting sets the direction for the business for the next year.  They are regular businesses, but owned and controlled by the people who buy from or sell to the business.  Every member can express an opinion and vote on changes in direction.              

    Two years of short yields for farmers have kept the tonnage of corn, beans, wheat and oats down, but higher prices have helped the farmers and coop. The higher prices of both the farmer’s crops and the costs of fertilizers and sprays factor in to the larger sales number.  

    Meeting new state regulations for the area where farm chemicals are handled took extra effort and costs this year.  The new area will be a roofed and have a concrete floor to contain any spills and keep rain from creating runoff according to manager Charles Svoboda.  

    Last year it was decided to build a new building near the grain storage area east of town and move from the current feed mill, store and rented office on main street.  The effort to meet the new regulations got in the way of the new building.  It should get built this year. 

    After election of Bruce Gustafson for a new term as a director, the floor was opened to questions, suggestions and motions from the members.  One farmer suggested that a person with horse expertise would be valuable to the feed store.  Cattle numbers are down drastically in the past decade and horse numbers are increasing, he stated.  The exisiting store and new one should aim to support that group even more than it does now.  Several suggestions were made as to what should be in the new store.  

     Credit card transactions were discussed with agreement that it should happen, although the 3% fee to the credit card company would have to be accommodated in the prices. 

    Increasing efforts are being directed towards the cleaning and bagging of corn for people with corn heating stoves.  Most people buy in 50 lb bags.  Was this extra work being recognized in the costs?     The auditor told us that small co-ops have to emphasize service as it is difficult for them to compete on price with large volume businesses.  The market for smaller purchases and specialized items with more handling were likely to continue.  The Co-op should try to support that market he stated.   

    A member commented that although there are many crop farmers in the Cushing Co-op area who are served well by the grain drying and storage elevators and seed and spray facilities, there are dwindling numbers of cattle farmers being served by the feed store.  The Co-op’s store’s future is in how well it can market to the new hobby farmers in the area he thought.    

    It was agreed that the local history society should film and otherwise document the old mill before it closes.  The ideal movie would be a farmer with an older pickup loaded with corn, hand shoveled into the outside hopper, ground, mixed, sacked and reloaded.  Friday late morning to noon would be the best time to view the mill in operation this way according to one of the employees.    In the old days the farmers brought milk cans and unloaded them at the creamery next door and then their corn to be ground as the line of pickup trucks snaked its way through the two Co-ops.  Old pictures and memories should be forwarded to Russ Hanson (see the River Road Rambler column in the Leader).