Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Milk can washing machine

I planted some young Hickory and White oak trees on a sidehill this spring and have been using some milk cans to transport water to them. The cans and water reminded of a time when I worked for the U. S. Forest Service. On Saturdays a bunch of us workers would drive into town for food and recreation. Our foreman showed us how to wash our clothes using milk cans on the trip to town and back.

Laundry detergent, Borax, about 4 gallons of water and load with clothes. The agitation motion of the cans in the back of the pickup cleans the clothes. Clothes go into cans of water for rinsing for the return trip. Of course we separated darks and whites.

Roundoak, I've never washed in the cans, but we still have some of my cans. 130 was my number with the dairy coop.

Those are collector's items, the smaller the better.

Many of the cans around here end up filled with sand or cement with a post for a rural mail box. I have a handy milk can seat made with a cast iron seat that I parted out from a horse drawn cultivator.

I like those Key overalls in the first picture.

Sounds a lot like John Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie.

We had a few of those cans from our milking days back in the 1950's. I used to use them to haul water in if I need to transport a few gallons. One of my brothers evidently did something with them. Wish I had them back.

Those milk cans are getting harder to find. And more expensive when you do find one.

Since I was a kid I never paid much attention to milk cans except to fill them with milk, move them into the milk house cold water tank, help the milk truck driver load them and unload them. Oh, and wash the empty return cans. That was before the cheese factory washed them for a slight fee deducted off the milk check.

Milking cows became more appealing after Dad installed a pipeline milking system and a bulk milk tank.

My great Grandfather managed a small coop creamery for years utilizing canned milk and when the coop was sold I saved some of the cans that had the creamery label on the cans. A few years ago my wife took the best looking can of the lot and had it re-tinned for a Father's Day gift. Bless her heart, she meant well, but she didn't realize the can lost it's vintage value. I will never tell her.

The can with the seat was rescued out of a farm ditch dump on a farm I purchased several years ago. It is marked Bellows Falls Coop Cry Bellows Falls VT. Google shows a little history of the coop. Interesting to me is it is 1150 miles from VT to the ditch.

Those are cool and like the other poster, reminded me of Travels with Charlie.

Here's one I found near camp on a deer hunt in AZ a few years back. No telling what it had been used for. Diesel for a logging operation or road crew? Water? ................... Milk!



(Jeez, I had no idea that pic was so blurry. Probably the camera, it could not have been me shaking, it was below freezing that morning)


and look what's still under it:


It's still up there, about 30 miles south of Flagstaff, near the little pine that was rubbed by a buck.

Geno

I have one of grandad cans that Mom had a scene of the farm painted on. It has the brass Id tag from when they would put the cans on the train and the milk would get shpiped to the Cumberland Md creamery ,and the cans shipped back.