… I was visiting some family in Wisconsin, land of the dairy farm.

(A generic Wisconsin dairy–not my family’s farm.)

That made me start thinking about milk and a few related topics came to mind.

The first thing I remembered was my experience with milk as a child. I grew up in Los Angeles in a gilded age when the milk was delivered to your home by the milkman. You’d leave a note for the milkman–say, “2 quarts whole; 1 pint cream”–and then the next morning, the order would appear. The milkman and his truck were a common early morning sight in the US, back in the day.

Usually, the milkman would leave it on the doorstep, but the really nice houses had a kind of built-in receptacle to hold the milk and keep it out of the sun.

But in earlier days, milk seems to have been delivered in a totally different way. Here’s an image I’ve had in my files for a while–from an era even earlier than the days when I was a kid in LA.

Seeing the Belgian woman pouring the milk into a bowl reminded me of a visit to my sister’s house where she had a traditional milk container. You’ve seen them before–they look like this:

All of this recent milk sightings has made me wonder a few things–great SRS Challenges for us to work on this week!

1. Those milk containers (as seen in the previous image): Do they have a specific name? If I want to buy one, what term or name would I search for? Is it possible to buy new ones?

2. As I said above, some houses had a kind of mini-closet into which the milkman would put the day’s delivery: What was that mini-closet called?

3. Milk delivery by dog? Seems odd to me–why use dogs to deliver the milk? In particular, can you figure out where that image of the dog-cart milk delivery came from? What other kinds of animals were (or are) used to deliver milk to the customer?

4. Milk generally comes from cows, and we have a lot of them in Wisconsin and California. But what other animals produce milk that’s widely used as human food? That is, I know whales produce milk too, but it’s not really a common food item. Which kinds of animal milk is used as a food product? (Extra credit just for fun and a surprise: Which four states are the top milk producers in the US?)

Hope you find this dairy-focused Challenge to be as fascinating as I did!

(Remember: I’ll come back again in a week, August 2, to give my solution to this Challenge. I’m off to Mexico to do a bit of research for future SRS Challenges!)

Search on!