The Amish Keep Milk Fresh for a Week Without Electricity — The Clay Pot Method From the Old Country

The Amish Keep Milk Fresh for a Week Without Electricity — The Clay Pot Method From the Old Country. For under twenty dollars and a minute of water morning and night, I keep milk sweet for most of a week in the August heat with no electricity. In seventy years I have never owned a refrigerator. My name is Mammi Sarah. I am Amish, I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and I raised eight children on the milk of one cow. My mother had no springhouse, so she used the clay pot. When the power goes out you have four hours, maybe six, and a good gallon goes down the drain. Nobody hid this from you. The people who sell you the box simply never said the pot existed. I will show you the two unglazed pots, the sand and the wet cloth, how to build it, where to set it, and the one thing almost nobody is told: milk does not need to be cold, only cool, still and clean. Held in the fifties, it gives days instead of hours. ⚠️ Milk must be kept clean, and I am a farm woman, not a doctor. Scald it, keep every jar spotless, trust your own nose. This is no refrigerator, and in damp air the chill is gentler. Treat it with the respect your grandmother did. Tell me in the comments where you live and how damp your summers get. I read every one. 🔔 Subscribe for more of the old ways — next time, how my grandmother kept butter firm on the table all summer with a bowl, a dish of water, and one thing from the well.