Remembering dairy days

One of my childhood memories is the early-morning delivery van dropping off milk from the local dairy. Our empty glass milk bottles would be on the doorstep with their red and yellow coupons ready for pickup. It was the first sound I remember in the mornings even before the bird calls and the thud of the newspaper as it was dropped into our post box.

Back in the 70s, before shopping malls and service station shops dotted the Windhoek suburbs, and before long-life milk filled their shelves, our fresh milk was delivered by the neighbourhood dairy. Every day the dairy workers would collect fresh milk from the farms in the outlying areas or farmers would drop off their milk at the dairy where it would be homogenised and pasteurised, and also made into cream, butter and ice-cream. Milk bottles would be boiled and refilled in an efficient reusable system that was working well long before ‘recycling’ became a sustainability concept decades later.

I remember as a young boy collecting the milk bottles from the stoep and adding the fresh milk to my warm pap porridge or cornflakes before I went to school. The rest of the milk would then be used by our family during the day before the empty bottles were washed and deposited at the door with the coloured coupons, bought beforehand to pay for the purchase and indicate what you were requesting that day.

The dairy workers slept at the dairy and were up before dawn to begin their deliveries before the products could spoil in the sun. A driver would make the rounds through the quiet, empty streets while two agile delivery men would jump off the van as it paused in front of the houses, quickly collecting the bottles and making the exchange before hopping aboard again.

Droughts and winter dryness affected the amount of pasture for the cows and the supply of milk, and full production would resume with the return of the rains.

By the 80s the milk delivery system was no longer in use and many of the small dairies closed as the ways of the world changed.

When I found this old Windhoek Municipality milk bottle in a second-hand shop, memories flooded back to me of my school days and the milk bottles waiting to be picked up in their crate, decorated with colourful coupons.

(Reference: Bruno Hoppe)