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From the Smoky Lake Signal, Wednesday, July 16, 1980. Andrew Creamery - Last of its Kind In cars and pick-up trucks from as far away as Lamont, Vilna and Smoky Lake, Hairy Hill and Willingdon, the cream cans come in to Andrew. The Northern Alberta Dairy Pool Creamery on the east side of the village is the last of the small plants still in operation. Built in 1938 it ships 1,300 pounds of cream a week to the main plant in Edmonton. It serves as a gathering, testing, paying point, for the farmers in the area who still milk cows and separate the cream. As the milk cans rumble through the front shoot, Manager Gus St. Onge ladles and tastes a sample. the best is Special. The rest; the old and sour is No. 1. A small milk bottle is half filled, marked and set aside, one for each can. The rest is emptied into a transfer vat and pumped into a holding tank to cool down to 40 degrees for shipment to the city. Washed, rinsed and steamed the cans are ready to go back to the farmer. The ceiling of the main storage room constantly drips as the steam rises, cools and condenses, but the smaller laboratory like sample room is drier. A small vial of each sample is weighed out in that room. Sulphuric acid, the same kind as car batteries run on is added. Then a dash of water and into the centrifuge. This machine heats the vials of milk and spins them until the butter fat separates. A quick check of the scale on each vial, and the content is read out to the bookkeeper, Sandra Basisty. She records them, making the calculations and marks each farmer's earnings in a big ledger. The more butter fat each can of cream contains, the more the farmer is paid. Special also gets 8 cents of a kilogram extra price over No. 1 even though both are dumped in the same vat for shipment. The value of the same 50 lb. cream can can bottom at $21 or go up to $29 depending on what the cow's eaten and how well the cream has been kept. The big producers with over 20 cows deliver 2 times a week. For their 3,000 kg. of butter fat a year they earn $9,300. With the federal subsidy of 76 cents per pound the dairy man can earn another $5,000. But you can't just keep cows when you're that big. You've got to get rid of the skimmed off milk - and that usually means keeping hogs. The milk may cut down on the concentrate the hogs need, but it dies the dairyman down for even longer hours to the business of farming. For the smaller producers the milking season ends as soon as the first snow flies. That means the bookkeeper, Mrs. Basisty goes on to part time. For most of the week Gus is left to handle the slack season alone. Up to 5 years ago, with the butter churn going and 7 on staff, making butter it was busy all year. That part of the operation has moved to Edmonton. But the creamery still goes on. Return to the
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