Section 3 of 5
4entries
The Fruitière
One farm's milk was never enough.
The cooperative dairy exists because one farm's milk was never enough to fill a vat. What follows is the pooling, the rotation that shared out the result, the vessel the work was done in, and what was left over.
Every entry in The Fruitière
- Pooled milkOne farm's milk was never enough for one wheel, so the neighbours pooled it — which made the dairy a shared institution rather than a business.
- The tour de rôleMembers took the finished cheese in turn, in proportion to what they had brought, recorded in a book.
- The copper vatCopper conducts evenly and behaves predictably with the curd, which is why the material outlasted every reason to replace it.
- WheyWhat is left after the curd is the second trade under the same roof, and it has always been fed to animals rather than discarded.
The arithmetic behind the institution
400Fruitières counted in Haute-Savoie at the practice’s height
240And in Savoie over the same period
1Vat, filled by several herds — the reason the building is shared
2Trades under one roof, once the whey went to the pigs