Butter is quite easily and economically made at home, especially with a blender or food processer. Salted butter can be stored for weeks and even months at proper temperature. Canned butter can last as long as any other canned product. Butter has long been regarded by my people as an essential part of eggs and toast for breakfast. Butter is half of the justification for having refrigeration in the first place, the other half being to preserve medicines and serums for other arguably just as important life-saving activity.

So from the prepper or survivalist or self-sufficiency perspective, it looks like the butter-churn is coming back into fashion. Compared to other farm chores, it’s a welcome chance to sit down. It’s certainly more pleasant that actually obtaining the milk from the cow. Remember, with dairy processing, proper food handling and sanitation is really important. The critical phase of milk handling is the moment it comes out of the cow and into our environment. We need to cool it quickly and consume it or process it by any method here described. Raw milk can be strained and put into sanitized steel, glass or plastic containers for cooling, and can hang out in a proper root cellar for a week or longer. The cream will rise to the surface and can be used to richen certain things, used for butter or cheeses and the lower fat milk below consumed with your Wheaties. The nice thing about milk is we don’t have to wonder if it’s bad. Everything in us knows when we have a mouth full of bad milk, the nose knows it as soon as that milk comes close. Imagine being the man with the last box of Wheaties on planet Earth and you get to be the last man who can said you did when they say “better eat your Wheaties, men” and you had them with lowfat milk. You are gonna have a leg up on that day.