One of our regular pre Christmas tasks at Montrose Dairy is separating some cream. This was a daily task many years ago on this farm, when the cream was sold and the skim milk was fed to pigs. Now we only roll out the old hand separator 3 or 4 times a year, when I have an ice cream making frenzy, we have visitors or at Christmas.  We had three generations on the job today, the process always ignites a few old stories from my parents.

There is always much debate about how thick the cream should be, invariably it always seems to be thicker than triple cream, you might call it spreading cream. Thick and super creamy it is delicious.

While this is a fun family activity the old separator certainly doesn’t meet the high standards of the milk we sell, this is one of those fringe benefits of farming we get to enjoy ourselves.

The Cream of Christmas