No Milk Today

Nor indeed on any other day since 1974 when churn stands like this one became redundant with the arrival of bulk milk tankers that collected straight from the milking parlours.

Before that, for many years, farms with dairy herds would fill 10-gallon metal churns and place them on a designated stand at the road side for collection, clean churns being left in their place.

Every farm had a churn stand, made of stone, brick or concrete, and many of them remain in situ, overlooked and overgrown, as is ours which I photographed while waiting for the bus today. It had been out of use for 20 years when we arrived and now it's fast becoming part of the landscape quite literally as it gathers moss and other vegetation.

It's given me the idea to blip some more churn stands before they all disappear from the roadsides. Here's one I snapped earlier that's rather more impressive and here's one of a more traditional construction. An old photo shows churns being collected by the delivery lorry.