milk can

noun, large can used to transport milk from the farm to the dairy

“Did you put the milk cans in the water to keep them cool?”

“I want the girls to realize that these big milk cans were on a little cart behind a horse.”

“They had cream cans or milk cans in the boat and they’d be floating, and he’d dive down and get one and tell him to hang onto the can, and then he’d dive down and get another one.”

“The big chore after that was then, after the whey was dumped, somebody had to wash the milk cans.”

“We had a team of horses and, like, a wagon, and lots of milk cans.”

“The people start bringing their milk to the factory in the morning, 5:30, 6:00. They used to have big drums. What were they, 80-gallon?”
“30, 40-gallon milk cans. The big ones.”

“He’d take your stuff up to the market for a nickel a container or something. You know you’d have them packed in washtubs and milk cans and so on, you know. I’m talking about a 30-gallon milk can. And so that was a big help.”

“Len Jones and Minnie the Mare, who I don’t remember. They were before my time, but they could literally walk on water. They’d leave here and scoot out. There’s a picture in our collection somewhere of people in the sleigh with butter boxes and milk cans and the water up to the horse’s knees. And off they go.”

“We had a lot of maple syrup. We probably had 75 or more pails out. Maybe a hundred pails, I don’t know. But he had the two milk cans full when, you know, we’d bring them back. And we collected all the sap and dumped them in the milk can. And then he’d bring them where we’d boil. He usually had a fireplace out in the woods not too far from the barn.”