whey

noun, the watery liquid that remains when milk forms curds (COD); see also whey-butter, whey-cream

“Dad always had pigs. You fed them the whey and ground oats, eh.”

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

“They would drain the whey off, and in our factory, we saved the whey, and it went through a separator and made whey-butter. Did you ever hear of whey-butter?”

“I still recall taking the milk down to our local cheese factory at the time. And things were quite a bit different then. They had the whey there, which you would give to the pigs.”

“Two guys, well, a guy that lived in this house right here, the other guy lived up the front road. They just happened by in a truck and Dad said this guy would take two five-gallon pails of whey like that and walk up the ladder, hand them to Tom — he was quite a small man — and he spread them around the fire on the roof and anyway, saved the building from burning.”

“I remember Dad just giving them the whey, but he probably fed them something besides that. But pigs had a big run. They had a whole field maybe fifty acres, you know, where they could run. And they eat clover and everything, I think.”

“Then drained the whey off, and you were left with these big slabs in the vat. And you’d have to go over the side of the vat, and turn this curd, eh. With your hands.”

“When they were using the whey for the pigs it was good, before they started making whey-butter. The whey-butter took a lot of the texture and nutrients out of it, and then it was more like water.”

“And when they tightened the press then it would slide together and squeeze the juice or whey out and make it solid.”

“When they were in the press, the whey had to get out of them. There was still whey in there, eh, and then my dad would have to go back out late at night and put another couple springs on the cheese to make sure there was lots of pressure on it to squeeze the excess moisture out.”

“I remember we used to leave some of the milk sit and skim the cream off it, and then we’d make it into butter. Well, actually we had a separator too. I think you put just whole milk in that, and it separated the cream out, and then you had the whey. But you could essentially do the same thing by leaving it sit overnight.”

“Well, and before they started separating the cream, the whey was pretty good feed. You could feed your, like, spring calves that. There was still good stuff in it, eh. Well, then up at the Kraft, then, they separated and made whey-butter, eh. So the whey was just more or less just water.”

“In twenty minutes or so, you cut the curd, you know, with wired knives, and turn the steam on and cook it a bit, drain some of the whey off and keep working ’til the whey was gone, and cheddar up the sides of the vat, sheepskin it, put the curd mill on and mill the curd into the vat and salt, put it in the hoops. And three 33-pound piles of curd made a 90-pound cheese.”