A very important aspect of pioneer life in Canada was home butter-making. This could be achieved with the use of this device, a rocking butter churn. Butter churning was a practice that involved agitating cream in order to separate the butter milk from the yellow butter fat. This would be achieved through the constant rocking motion of the rocking butter churn, which was operated by a simple lever or foot pedal. Churning usually took place twice a week during the summer.
The rocking butter churn was introduced in the mid eighteenth century and became widely-used in the nineteenth century. There were many different methods of churning butter at the time, such as the more primitive plunge or dash churn, the paddle churm, and the crank-operated barrel churn. The rocking butter churn, however, was more easily used and wasted less cream than other churns, and they were also known to produce sweeter butter. This method replaced the often torturous work of the dash churn and saved time and money through its efficiency.
This particular artifact is a Eureka Sanitary Churn, manufactured by the Eureka Planter Co. of Woodstock, Ontario. The ceramic barrel of this product made it easier to clean than a wooden one (hence its name), but it also would have made it more expensive. It was manufactured in 1900. It was also more expensive.