Kinmount Creamery

By Guy Scott

In the late 1800s, a popular farm industry across Ontario was dairy products. Some urban Ontarians still kept cows and logistics with fresh milk were formidable in the days before widespread refrigeration. You could have milk delivered to your home by small, independent dairies, but only in towns or villages. In Kinmount, the Clark Family from Reid Road provided fresh milk delivery in the village. But the real business was cheese or butter. Milk could be turned into these two products quite easily. There was a market for both in larger cities and outside the country. Both handled well, needed less refrigeration and had a longer shelf life than raw milk.

Dairy cattle thrived in Ontario and did well on the rough ground of the Canadian Shield. And many farmers could easily keep a few cows on their semi-rocky acres, providing extra income. Many small cooperatives were started around the area. The farmers would pool their money to start a cheese factory or creamery. They would then agree to supply a certain quantity of milk to the factory. Drivers were hired to collect the milk or cream on a regular basis every day for cheese and every 2-3 days for cream. The cream was hauled to the factory where professional cheese makers or butter makers would do their thing.

Kinmount had a cheese factory by 1896. That year the Lindsay Watchman newspaper reported the Kinmount Cheese Factory had burned down. The cause was supposed to be arson. The factory was insured for $700. The business was rebuilt and was in operation as the Graham Brothers Creamery by 1900. A creamery produced butter. While not as numerous as cheese factories, butter making was big business. The Flavelle Brothers operation in Lindsay produced huge amounts of butter.

A 1904 Watchman-Warder newspaper reported on the Kinmount Creamery in detail. “The Kinmount Creamery Is Making Choice Butter: One of the Features of the Northern Village is Graham Brothers Butter Factory” Among the leaders to see the vast possibilities of the north country as a dairy region, and easily the pioneers of its development in that direction, are the Graham Brothers of Kinmount. Situated in a district whose rugged aspect is softened in summer by rich, sweet pasture and the music of spring-fed streams, the region is a natural location for a butter factory. Perched amid its hills at an elevation all but a few feet the highest in Ontario, it is amid the pure airs that are nighest heaven, and blessed by all the conditions that favour the product of choice butter. The Graham Brothers Creamery was built in 1900. It is 30 X 70 and two stories high. Situated on a hill side, it has perfect natural drainage, and its general sanitary conditions are ideal. Its cement floors, sloped and guttered, perfectly shed all moisture, and hence are always sweet and clean. The upstairs is used for ice and general storage. Downstairs is the plant: and it is particularly complete and up to date. The twin cream vats are set to receive the cream at the elevation of the driveway on that side of the building. They are flanked by the chambers and steam pipes, by which the temperature of the cream is controlled. It runs by gravitation into a fine combined Simplex churn driven by steam. This churn is of the rotary sort, and as it revolves, a series of shelves around its insides beats the tumbling cream into butter. And this butter is not touched by the maker’s hands. Then an automatic worker is wheeled forward and thrust clear into and across the churn, parallel with the shelves inside. The gearing of this worker, which are mainly a pair of corrugated rollers that work toward each other, is coupled onto the gearing of the churn and both are put into operation together. The revolving churn lifts the butter onto the shelves and as each comes to the perpendicular above the worker, its burden of butter drops upon that machine. Passes between its rollers and down into the churn to again be taken up by the shelves and so on as long as the maker desires. It is washed, salted, worked and made ready for packing before it leaves the churn. Then it is ladled into parchment-lined boxes and sealed up for shipment, or by a mold made up into dainty roll, wrapped in parchment bearing the firm’s name and packed in crates. The equipment of the factory, even to its refrigerator with tubular ice tanks is complete. If the development of the Graham Brothers business is any indication of the possibilities of dairying in the north, that country has a bright future before it. The year the factory began, the firm paid $300 for cream in July. Last July they paid $3,400 and the average for the six grass months was $2,000. Three wagons traverse the country for miles around gathering cream, and large amounts come in by train. The butter maker, Mr. D B McKenzie is a graduate of the Kingston Dairy School and a thoroughly competent man. Mr. McKenzie was the only dairyman from this district to attend the recent convention of the Eastern Dairyman’s Convention at Belleville. The growing business of this concern includes the patronage of some of the best private and hotel customers in the big cities.”

Over 30 days ending August 2, 1907, 37 Dairy Cows around Kinmount averaged 609 pounds of milk, at 3.6% test (butterfat percentage), producing 22.3lbs of fat each.

Image: Monty Robson of Robson’s Farm Equipment, Fenelon Falls sold Cream Separators to the local farmers. Everyone dealing with the Kinmount Creamery needed such a device. It was likely a DeLaval brand separator made in Peterborough. Monty was a director and President of the Kinmount Fair and proudly sports his badge.