SearchResearch Challenge (7/26/17): Milking the milk topic...

Not many weeks ago... 

... I was visiting some family in Wisconsin, land of the dairy farm. 

(A generic Wisconsin dairy--not my family's farm.)  

That made me start thinking about milk and a few related topics came to mind.  

The first thing I remembered was my experience with milk as a child.  I grew up in Los Angeles in a gilded age when the milk was delivered to your home by the milkman.  You'd leave a note for the milkman--say, "2 quarts whole; 1 pint cream"--and then the next morning, the order would appear. The milkman and his truck were a common early morning sight in the US, back in the day.    

Usually, the milkman would leave it on the doorstep, but the really nice houses had a kind of built-in receptacle to hold the milk and keep it out of the sun.  

But in earlier days, milk seems to have been delivered in a totally different way.  Here's an image I've had in my files for a while--from an era even earlier than the days when I was a kid in LA.  

Seeing the Belgian woman pouring the milk into a bowl reminded me of a visit to my sister's house where she had a traditional milk container.  You've seen them before--they look like this: 

All of this recent milk sightings has made me wonder a few things--great SRS Challenges for us to work on this week!  

1.  Those milk containers (as seen in the previous image):  Do they have a specific name?  If I want to buy one, what term or name would I search for?  Is it possible to buy new ones?  

2. As I said above, some houses had a kind of mini-closet into which the milkman would put the day's delivery:  What was that mini-closet called?

3.  Milk delivery by dog?  Seems odd to me--why use dogs to deliver the milk?  In particular, can you figure out where that image of the dog-cart milk delivery came from?  What other kinds of animals were (or are) used to deliver milk to the customer?  

4.  Milk generally comes from cows, and we have a lot of them in Wisconsin and California.  But what other animals produce milk that's widely used as human food?  That is, I know whales produce milk too, but it's not really a common food item.  Which kinds of animal milk is used as a food product?  (Extra credit just for fun and a surprise: Which four states are the top milk producers in the US?)  

Hope you find this dairy-focused Challenge to be as fascinating as I did!  

(Remember:  I'll come back again in a week, August 2, to give my solution to this Challenge.  I'm off to Mexico to do a bit of research for future SRS Challenges!)  


Search on!