MONROE, Wisconsin — Butter inventories rose 16% from a year earlier, and Doris Balzer told her family she could have the matter straightened out by Thanksgiving if everybody brought a spare pie tin. The grandchildren offered to help. Doris asked if any of them knew the difference between helping and opening the oven to see what she was doing. Her grandson indicated he was prepared to learn.
Doris first read the figure at breakfast. She called her sister and asked how much room there was in the freezer. Her sister said there was room for a half gallon of ice cream. Doris said the right question was how attached she was to the other things in the freezer.
Butter Inventories Give Wisconsin an Assignment
AgWest Farm Credit’s dairy inventory analysis reported that U.S. butter stocks ended September 16% above their year-earlier level. Butter can be held in cold storage, so inventories help show how much product is on hand between production and sales. A September inventory number and the price on the sticker in your local grocery store are different snapshots. Production, holiday demand, contracts and store promotions all play a part in when and how the price a shopper sees moves. Doris was glad to hear there were contracts because she had long suspected the neighbors of working under some kind of arrangement to get the good stuff before she got to the store.
Her daughter had a list of what the family actually planned to eat. Doris looked it over and added “rolls” in three places. She explained that dinner rolls, leftover turkey rolls and the morning rolls you eat while making the dinner rolls all fell within the accepted boundaries of the holiday.
How to Shop the Holiday Butter Sales
A shopper can compare the price per pound and check any quantity limits. Think about which recipes call for salted or unsalted butter and what you’ll really use before it picks up freezer odors. Doris’s daughter labels and dates what she freezes. At her mother’s house, things are dated by the wedding or funeral the container originally came from, which works as long as someone can remember who married in the spring and whether the cookies were before or after the argument about parking.
At a grocery store, Doris asked whether the butter price would apply if she bought a full case. The clerk said he’d check. By the time he came back she had written three new names on her guest list and persuaded a neighbor to bring pastry flour. She showed the clerk the updated list in case he wondered why she would need the butter. The clerk said he had thought she ran a restaurant. Doris said restaurants typically knew how many people they were expecting.
By Thanksgiving morning, the cousins had converted the front porch into a pie cooling area. Doris’s son opened the refrigerator and asked what had happened to the last stick of butter. Doris said it was being held back as a strategic reserve. He asked whether he could have a pat for his toast. “Of course,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
Cold storage figures exclude the half stick Doris keeps behind the celery.
Last Updated on November 15, 2026 by Alan Nafzger