What's the Scoop

[frogpatch]

My wife picked this up over the weekend with some other old items. It measures about 9-10 inches long and 6 inches wide approximately. It is very shallow and the front edge is very blunt.  It show a great amount of age and is hand carved. What do you think its purpose was?

[mart]

I have no clue !!

[talesofthesevenseas]

I know exactly what it is. It's a butter paddle. Have a look on Ebay and you will see a bunch of them. That's what you use to get the butter out of a large churn.

[talesofthesevenseas]

Here is a much better description of how a butter paddle is used:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-butter-paddle.htm

And another very similar one to yours:
http://www.fanaticscountryattic.com/store/WsDefault.asp?One=60

[Rauville]

Just sidenote on how the younger generations view butter making:

I once had a 10 gallon wooden barrel churn in the shop. A young lady was looking at it and asked what it was used for. I replied that it was a butter churn. She looked at me with a surprised look on her face and said: "Who the heck could afford enough butter to fill that thing up"!

[frogpatch]

Thanks for the information. I will tell my wife and she will find a place to hang it. When I get out of the witness protection program and have a bigger place again I can display all of this stuff. I have a whole 10 x 20 storage full of it in FLA.

I like the story about the churn. I had one and sold it. I also had a butter rocker that was a huge slanted V shaped table with a big paddle. Ever see one?

[mart]

When I had my shop we had one that was a wooden barrel on stand with a hand crank !! Churned as it was turned !!
I thought about butter paddle but decided against it since it has the small sides !! Or at least it looks like it does !! We used a flatter one to work the butter after churning and a dipper to get it out of the churn !!