Daunor-Mazuk Milk Shed

208 Salmon Brook Street

A Bit More:

Roger Hayes, born in 1931, a former Treasurer and longtime member of SBHS, grew up in the 1930s-'40s on his father's farm in North Granby. He remembers that in processing the milk, they had a separate area of the barn called the "milk room" where the milk was strained, poured into 10-gallon cans; the cans were then put into a cistern of cold water. When the milk truck came to the farm, Roger described that he would lift the milk cans from the cistern, and load the cans onto the milk truck for transportation to a dairy in Hartford.

History of Milk Sheds:

In the Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings, the Author Thomas Durant Visser describes the use of milk sheds, either attached to the barns or as a separate building. The designs of the sheds were simple gabled buildings, a door at one end, windows, with ventilation, and located near a spring for access to water. The milk sheds had concrete or stone tubs/troughs filled with spring-fed water, into which milk cans could be placed to be kept cool before being transferred to a dairy.

Even More:

The milk shed on the property of the Nathaniel Holcomb III house in Granby is of early 20th-century construction. The stone trough extends out of the milk shed, providing drinking water for the cows. It has the features as described in the Thomas Durant Visser book. A simple gabled building, with a door, window, and a cutout near the roof line for ventilation. A stone trough, now filled with plants, extends from inside the shed to the outside. The trough would have been filled with water, from a nearby stream, and used with a dual purpose; inside the cans of milk were kept cool, while on the outside cows were able to drink the water.