OMAHA (DTN) -- I have always been drawn to history and its many artifacts. This is especially true with the history of my family and the various items associated with the previous generations of my family.

I have attempted to save as many things, both big and small, as I could from my family's history, probably much to the chagrin of my wife. This includes a couple vintage tractors, including one of my grandpa's first tractors (a 1935 John Deere D) and his last tractor (a 1957 John Deere 620).

Collecting these items, I sometimes have forgotten about what exactly we have from the past.

Earlier this winter to squeeze in more machinery in our one shed, we cleared out some things in one corner so we could put a wooden deck hayrack inside. One thing I came across again was a larger glass jar from my grandparents' old milking parlor.

Obviously, I knew it was in the shed somewhere, but I had rarely seen it since we moved to this farm in 1997. It was on an old desk and had been covered up with various other items during the last nearly 30 years.

It is really kind of amazing that this glass jar has survived more than 50 years and three moves to different farm places.

If you are not familiar with milking equipment, this jar would be called a receiving or weigh jar. Since I don't remember my grandparents' farm and thus the milking parlor (it was torn down for a housing development in 1975, when I was just a toddler), my dad tells me it was mounted on the wall in the bulk tank side of the parlor and all of the milk would flow through it after coming from the cow and before the milk would go into the bulk tank.

My grandpa, my two uncles and my dad (and before them my great grandpa) all milked cows on the family farm just outside of Omaha. My grandpa had been milking shorthorns until the 1950s when my oldest uncle joined him in the operation and they switched to milking Guernsey cattle.

By the time my dad was in charge of milking in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, he had switched to milking Holsteins. He told me one Holstein cow gave as much milk as two of his Guernsey cows, which is why he switched breeds.

The glass jar has the word "De Laval" etched into one side of it. It was part of the De Laval pipeline system they had in their milking parlor. They built the parlor in the mid-1950s at roughly the same time as the federal government made dairies have a closed milking system to prevent contamination issues in fluid milk.

One of the stories my dad told me about milking cows involves this receiving jar. Several years after building the parlor, this jar or the hoses attached to it started to leak. After not being able to stop the leak, my grandpa called his local De Laval dealer and he came out to fix the issue.

While attempting to fix the leak in the line, somehow the dealer managed to break the receiving jar. He quickly had to make a trip back to his shop, bring out another glass jar (the one we have) and install it before they milked again later that day.

When my grandparents sold their farm for development, the bulk tank was sold, as was the pipeline system. For some reason, however, whoever bought it did not take the glass receiving jar. So, just before the buildings were to be torn down, my dad disconnected the jar and took it with him.

Then began a half a century of being stored in various buildings until last November when I saw it again. This time, I took it inside our house and washed it good. Somehow the one side of the jar had red paint on it, and I had to use rubbing alcohol to remove it.

It is now on display in our kitchen on top of the one set of cabinets. Next to it is a large, gray mailbox with black lettering on the side that says "J.B. Quinn" -- my grandparents' mailbox when they lived on the farm.

Somewhere in that same shed in a plastic tote are several metal chains: each is attached to a tag with stamped number on it. Dairy cattle wore around their necks to identify them. I would like to find them again someday and display them as well.

We do have several items which belonged to my grandparents from their farm; however, this jar is the only thing left of their milking parlor. While I did not get to spend hours there like the previous two generations of my family did, I do feel a strong connection to them as I display this jar in my house on our current farm.

Russ Quinn can be reached at russ.quinn@dtn.com

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