 |
| Butter churning. |
 |
| Opening up the top of the barrel. |
 |
| Kneading the butter to get the rest of the liquid out. |
 |
| Eventually getting to a lump of butter that is smooth in texture and dry. |
 |
| Adding salt to make salted butter. |
 |
| The shaping begins. |
 |
| A different shape and pattern is pressed into each block of butter. |
 |
 |
 |
| All these are done not with any additional tools or gadgets. She does this using the same two paddles she has in her hands. |
Why do I like small producers?
Because what they do is honest and real. They don't create a story about what they do. They do what they do because of their story.
Because the people who make the stuff care a lot more. Doing it the harder way is alright if it ends up being better.
Because what they do and how they do it is more interesting than what goes in and comes out of a factory.
It's always easy to tell when producers care a lot about what they do. They could have just put the butter into a container. People were sold on their butter by the mere fact it was hand churned right on the spot.
They didn't need to go that bit further and spoil us strangers by making pretty patterns but they did. If they put so much more effort into this last stage of the process, think of how much more they have been spoiling their precious cows all year round.
Poor Anchor. When they don't have a story to tell, when their cows are as good as factory cows, when milk simply gets passed through lengths and lengths of steel pipes, when every bit of the process is industrialised, when not a single person has come into contact with the milk from the point the cow was milked to the slabs of butter rolled out, then the only thing they have got is this.
This is the only thing they can say about their butter.
P/S. And Anchor has spent £10m to tell the world this butter story of theirs. Or was there one?
