Getting ready!

This swollen udder means a calf is coming!

I've been waffling between sure that Sasha is pregnant and being terrified that I've just starved my cow and that's why she looks so caved in on the sides...but she'd be due April 22 if the AI took so... Here we go!

I've been gradually getting things ready... Found the mastitis test cards, mixed up a bottle of iodine solution for udder wash, and made udder balm from olive and coconut oil, eucalyptus, peppermint, and tea tree oil. I've never used udder balm before but the minty stuff is supposed to help with the edema, and her skin is pretty dry so I figured it was a good thing to try. Sure smells nice!

Infrastructure is the other thing to deal with: a cow in labour may try to bolt for the trees, and the fences back there need to be tightened. The pastures need more rest anyway, so I have the animals locked into the most securely fenced area, which adjoins the barnyard. I'll separate Sasha out when I think she is closer. 

Moving the animals meant getting the water in the summer location... So I took my rake and shovel and levelled a spot. It's the same "central watering hole" we set up last year, but it is on quite a slope so a bit of digging created a spot to put one of the big water cubes and a trough where it won't required levelling with boards and rocks. (I have no idea why it took me so long to realize that a shovel is all you need to make a level spot.) I can fill the big cube from the rainwater collection place or the hose... But this way we won't need a garden hose running across the yard all summer. I'll post a picture once it's all in place. 

Last job was to take more straw to the barn, some to eat and some for bedding.

 

Oh, and I made myself a set of dairy supply carry bags:

Pockets for all the stuff, washable, and easy to hang up inside and in the barn!

Now to wait one more week...

The Cow Buffet is now open for business

Today The Boy and his friend helped me roll the bales from the driveway (where they were delivered yesterday afternoon) into the feeding area.

 

All in place!

That is four rows of two hay and two straw bales in each row, plus I have two more straw bales … one kind of stuffed in at the back (where you can’t see it) and one just under my clothesline, on a tarp, where I can peel it apart and haul some straw up to the barn as needed.

 

The plans for the design we are following are here. Essentially, there is an alleyway just off to the right of the picture that lets the cows and donkey walk up to where the bales are: they have enough room to stand in front of the front row of bales and eat. Right in front of the bales is a strand of electric wire, which keeps them from walking around the sides of the bales and keeps them from messing up the bale too much … they have to reach over or under the zapping wire to get a bite to eat and they will have to clean up what they drop on the ground before I move the wire backwards so they can work on the next part of the bale. It’s a self-serve Cow Buffet!

 

While we were moving the bales in, Sasha stood at the gate demanding that we hurry up. The boys finished putting up the barbed wire around the perimeter and I got the electric wire figured out. I got some neat little adjustable insulator things that fit nicely onto rebar, and we have lots of rebar here. I cut a couple of pieces of rebar to the right length, pounded them in the ground with a hammer, attached the insulators, and strung the wire across in front of the bales. Got it hooked up to the charger and it was zapping away on the first try. If you look closely, you can see the yellow insulators and the two strands of white wire running in front of the bale.

 

Should the rebar get frozen into the ground, I can just put in a new piece ... The insulators can be moved, or I can just use more ... I got a whole bag of them for $4, so I have lots. I will probably also go out and run some wire along the walkway they use to get from the winter pen over to the feeding area: it goes right through one of the pastures, and I don’t really want them walking across the whole pasture all winter … especially come spring, they’ll eat all the new grass before it’s ready, so I need to figure out a way to block that off … and the electric wire should work fine. A few rebar posts, some insulators, some wire, an arch over the gate to get to the charging thing .. yeah, that should work.

 

I still need to get the string off most of the bales, I only did the front row, but for today, this is good! I’d also like to put a big tarp over the back rows of bales, to keep them in better shape over the winter. Need to pick one up, though – we don’t have one here that’s big enough.

 

Once we opened up the gate, Sasha came in and had some hay … when she got bitten by the electric wire she walked away in a huff, but she came back to eat some more so I'd say we have a successful strategy going! Of course we will have to see how it plays out over the full season but I am very happy to not be out feeding by hand every day. And having animals trained to electric wire is going to be a good thing for summer, too, I think. I'll be able to do some closer grazing management without installing permanent fences. ;)

 

Yay for hay and cow buffets!

Whitewash

The barn is dark inside. It has windows, and I usually have the door open, but still, it’s quite dingy in there.

So today, after converting two sheep stalls into one larger cow stall, I decided to experiment with whitewash. We had bought a bag of lime some time ago, which I used to help dry out the soggy ground in the barn intermittently, and I thought … hey, what about whitewash?

Mix the lime with some water and add a bit of salt, paint it on the walls, ignore the fact that it looks like it’s barely covering the surface and just keep painting … and voila! White walls!

The stuff comes off like dust for the first little while … I hear it needs to cure for a day or two (and even then it’ll flake off a bit with rubbing, but hey, lighter is better!). I covered all the gates, the pen walls, the interior barn walls, everything but the ceiling (which would be nice to have done as well .. maybe next year). It was a messy job, but it looks so much better in there! I will go out and test it tomorrow and see how it’s sticking.

I also installed the head gate, which I got as part of the milking machine barter deal a few weeks back: I painted it with some rust-covering paint, and hung it up in the milking stanchion. I had it in there yesterday, actually, and Sasha didn’t mind it at all, so I am very pleased.

This picture is kind of blurry, but it’s the only one I’ve got at the moment:

So yeah, after all that work my feet hurt and I’m very weary … I came in and had a shower, coated my feet and arms and back with Voltaren, and sat down to watch a movie (Inception – cool!) and knit. Now for some hefty sedatives and off to bed!

Bad attitude + very little milk = ….

A cow with a bad attitude + half the milk she usually gives = two lines on the milk test!

This is the P4 Rapid Milk Progesterone Test (available in Canada via Clintonix). It’s super simple: milk the cow, put a smidgen of milk in a little plastic vial (provided), drop the test strip in, and leave it for ten minutes. If you have one line, then she’s not in heat … two, and she is.

 

If you have a bull, it’s not a big deal to know when the cow is in heat – you’ll know, or he will, and it’ll be taken care of. And usually with multiple cows, you’ll know because they behave differently – Sasha used to stand at the fence and bellow when she was in heat, but now, it’s much more subtle. No bellowing, just a bit of pissiness when I went to bring her in for milking, and lowered milk production. But since I want to have her bred by AI this year, I need to know precisely when she’s ready – don’t want to pay the AI person to come all this way and then have it not take. Hence the test kit. I will test her weekly for the next month and see the pattern … then I’ll be able to predict within a few days when she’ll cycle next, and if I test daily at the likely time, I will be able to catch the right time and let the AI tech know we’re ready for her. She will bring sex selected Jersey semen – so we are almost guaranteed a female baby cow – and then I can test Sasha a few weeks later to confirm that the pregnancy took. If it didn’t, I’ll know, and we can try again. Technology is amazing.

 

The person on the other end of the email at Clintonix was very helpful, and I purchased 25 tests for right around $200, postage and all. I can’t imagine anything easier to use, and the test strips even ‘keep’ so if you want to compare a few to each other, you can do that.

 

Neat, eh?

Barter

Today I went on a road trip to Rocky Mountain house, and this is wht I came home with!

I left behind a cooler full of beef, which we had in surplus … the lady who posted this milking machine said it was in her barn when she moved in, and the barn needs to come down (oh, yes, it most definitely does) but the equipment ought to be put to good use if someone could get it cleaned up.

I went for the milker – which is a Surge bucket milker (top picture), complete with the claw, the pulsator, surcingle, and (most importantly) the vacuum pump (bottom left). I had been looking into setting one up – a friend had a bucket I could have, but I needed to buy a pump and the shells and claw (and possibly the pulsator), which was going to be about $300, near as I could figure. So I started looking for a full-meal-deal kind of thing, and found this!

The head catches (bottom right) were in the barn and the lady said if I could use them please take them … so we got them unhooked and here they are! A can of Tremclad will deal with the rust and then I’ll install one of them in Sasha’s milking stanchion. They work by trapping the cow by the neck, bascially: it opens (the one on the right is open) and the cow puts her head through to get to the food you’ve set on the other side, then you latch it shut and she can’t back out because her head is wider than her neck – but the opening is plenty wide enough to keep her head through comfortably.

Sasha is pretty good without the catch, but it’s going to be very useful for training milk cows. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to buy, but having it is sure nice!

The milker cleaned up very nicely … I need to get air and milk hoses, and new insertions for the teat cups but that should be about it. The vacuum pump is really dirty (and too heavy for me to lift out of the car by myself, so I need to wait for The Boy to get home so we can unload it) and needs a bit of work and probably a new belt, but the lady said it had worked the last time she powered it up so we shall see.

I’m off to do some research!

The First Cheese: Caerphilly

I decided that one of the cheeses was ready for eating. It’s a Caerphilly, which is meant to be eaten fairly young, so I trimmed the rind and took a bite.

YUM!

It’s buttery and tangy all at the same time.

My son tasted it and said, “Yeah, that actually resembles cheese.”

I’m very pleased!

Of course I’m completely out of rennet, so I haven’t been able to make cheese for some time now. I kept waiting for the package to arrive in the mail … then finally realized it hadn’t come because I hadn’t actually *ordered* it, I’d just *thought about* ordering it.

So I’ve got rennet (and a few other cheese making goodies) on the way to me in the mail, and tomorrow I go on a bit of a road trip for another dairy making adventure … which I’ll tell ya about when I get back!

I need a bigger milk can.

4.25 litres. 

My milk can holds 2. 

Clearly I was not sufficiently optimistic!

Another day ...

... another three litres of milk.

And a litre of cream. (that's about 2-3 days worth of cream)

For anyone tracking Dexter milk production stats: we are 3 weeks into lactation, share milking with no separation of cow and calf as yet. Sasha gets about 4 lbs of mixed alfalfa cubes/pellets/beet pulp in the bowl as bribe/supplement during milking - no grain (ever), and obviously all the grass she can eat. I reliably get 3-4 litres of milk each day still: I had two marginally lower days, it was raining and yukky and I milked a little earlier than I normally do, which may have been the explanation, but even a lower day was a minimum 2 litres. The calf has realized he can nurse off all four quarters (though he usually leaves the left front, for which I do not blame him, that one is so huge I can't get my hand all the way around until she's nearly milked right out), so I expect I'll be separating them at least for a few hours in the afternoon in a week or so. I prefer to milk in the early evening, as I am most emphatically NOT a morning person, so separating them overnight is not on my list of things to do. 

Half a pound of butter and a cheese cave

Today I made just a half pound block of butter – I wanted to use up the cream I had, even though it wasn’t going to make a full block.

It is so rich and delicious, I just love it. I had to toast a waffle just so I could use the leftover butter from the spatula!

The other awesome dairy news today is that we now have a cheese cave! My friends had a little bar fridge taking up space in the garage, and graciously delivered it here today. With the addition of the external thermostat device (which we used to use on our chest freezer fridge), there is now a thermostatically controlled cabinet in which to age cheese at about 12 C and 80-95% humidity. There’s a little thermometer/hygrometer sitting inside so I can monitor the temperature and humidity, and four jelly jars full of water in the door seem to be keeping the humidity where it needs to be. I’ll have to watch over the next few days and see what happens, but this is very exciting! Cheese needs time to age and develop good flavour, but it needs warmer temperatures and higher humidity than a regular fridge provides, and much cooler than the ambient temperature anywhere in our house, so this is just perfect.

The latest cheese is soaking in brine right now, almost time to pull it out and let it dry off then into the cave it goes! I just opened the cave door to check things and oh, my, the smell is heavenly! It is all buttery cheesey goodness in there. Yum.

Two months then we can have our first cheese tasting. July 23, mark it on the calendar!

Dairy.

We have milk.

Oh, do we have milk.

Sasha is giving me about 4 litres a day now – at two weeks into her lactation. Zoinks! And the calf is definitely getting all he wants … he doesn’t even touch two of the quarters. The calf measuring tape is on the way in the mail, when it gets here I’ll start tracking his growth and see how he is doing. There’s a way to figure out approximately how much milk he is getting based on his growth rates, so that’ll give a clue about Sasha’s overall production. Still, four litres per day from a Dexter cow on share milking? That’s impressive.

Sasha is a little irritable in the milking stanchion – she’s kicking, which is frustrating (and potentially risky – though she is in the stall and can’t give me a good solid boot with the hoof, she can give me a nasty swipe that will leave bruises). I’m going to have to pick up hobbles for her, I think – I used to tie her back legs, but she was even more antsy with the ropes … now I tie one foot (the near one, so she can’t swipe me with it) and that usually works, but I can tell the rope bugs her there, too. Hopefully a set of proper soft hobbles will keep her still without bugging her. I saw them at the feed store, I’ll pick them up next time I’m in.

I found a really great jar at Bed, Bath and Beyond for milk in the fridge: it holds 2 gallons (8 litres) and has a tap on the bottom so I can draw off the milk. This leaves the cream up at the top, so the milk that comes out doesn’t have that layer of cream. I don’t mind it, but some of the other people in this house are more used to 1% milk and don’t like the creamy stuff so much. The other big advantage is simplicity: I don’t have to carefully skim from jars now with a spoon and a gravy baster – just drain off the milk, then pour the cream into another jar and I’m done. I have two litres of cream sitting out on the counter to clabber overnight for butter making tomorrow.

I found a Dazey butter churn on Kijiji for $20 … it was a little weary and needs the wooden paddle rebuilt, but for the price, why not? I cleaned it up with the Dremel and a whappity brush thing, so the rust is all gone. Now to ponder the paddle part. Tomorrow’s milk will be made the old shake-it-in-a-jar way!

So that’s our dairy animal update for today … I think I’ll go have a glass of milk!

Butter

The cream was overflowing the fridge, so I decided it was time to make butter.

I tried using the blender, as I’d read about online, but the butter didn’t form up as well as with the shaker jar and the noise was irritating, so I went back to the old strategy of just shaking the cream. I use one of The Reluctant Farmer’s protein shake jars – I take out the little spiral siphon thing that comes with it and instead drop in a small plastic ball from the toy room (well washed, believe me) because the butter sticks to all the little arms of the shaker’s insert and is too hard to get off, whereas I can just scrape the surface of the plastic ball with the spatula. Yes, I know you can get paddle churns, and I’d love one, but they are pretty expensive and the shaker jar was free.

I left the cream on the counter overnight to sour a smidgen, as the butter has a richer taste with slightly aged cream. Then, in batches, I shook it in the jar and poured off the buttermilk, scraped the butter into a bowl that went into the fridge while I did the next batch, and repeated. When I had all the cream made into butter, I added ice cubes to the bowl and smushed the butter back and forth with the spatula, working the buttermilk out, rinsing with water until it was clear. Sprinkled the whole thing with salt, worked it a bit more, then packed the butter into my grandfather’s antique butter press.

Clearly I didn’t pack it quite tight enough, as there’s a bit of a hole on the finished block, but this is really, really cool. I’ve never made enough butter before to fill the press – that’s nearly a pound of butter right there! From about a week’s worth of cream. Oh yes, I am a happy person. I will be making a lot of butter over the next few months I think! Butter stores well in the freezer, so it’s a good way to preserve the bounty of Sasha’s peak lactation.

The leftover buttermilk is going into the next batch of cheese – I am experimenting with that, as Carla Emery says you can use the buttermilk in cheesemaking, so hey, it’s worth a try! I’m also culturing with yogourt this time, just to see what happens … almost time to go add the rennet. Hopefully I do a better job cooking the curds on this cheese, my last one was a bit too moist when I was finished, I think.

Off to stir the milk!

Post script: My dad and my aunt have clarified the history of that butter mold. My great grandfather ran a creamery in Harrow, Ontario ... It burned down at one point but the churns and molds were at the house, not the creamery and so were spared. I found a record of the creamery in the archives ... from 1913. 

That makes this piece of butter making equipment a century old. 

I am carrying on a family tradition. How cool is that, eh?

Milk

Sasha and her baby Jerky are doing really well! 

The calf was pretty wobbly for the first few days but he is happily running around the pasture now and being adorable. 

Sasha is reliably giving me three litres of milk per day, and I know for sure the calf is getting his fill ... He only drinks from one side of Sasha's udder, the other side swells up so big he can't get a decent mouthful ... Which is why I help out with milking. I know what that fullness feels like, having once been a dairy provider myself!

Sasha gets about four pounds of alfalfa and beet pulp in a bowl when she is being milked: the supplement to her diet helps her keep production up without the potential negative effects (and added cost) of grain feeding. Four pounds is two scoops each of beet pulp and alfalfa pellets and three of alfalfa cubes, roughly, and costs about a dollar. Alfalfa and beet pulp are high in calcium and protein, and especially this time of year, when the hay is older and weathered and the grass really hasn't picked up yet growth wise, it's good to be sure Sasha has plenty of solid nutrition to support regaining her body condition after calving plus milk production. I'm trying to track how much I feed her and how much milk we get as well as how quickly the calf grows in order to get a clear idea of what her nutritional requirements are during lactation. She will get a little less once the grass comes in to better growth, as she will provide herself with enough nutrition out in the pasture, but there'll always be something in the dish ... Keeps her happy while I milk, and it's good for her. 

Lots of people keep Dexters, but not too many do the house cow share milking thing, so I'm trying to do my bit for the collective pool of knowledge by tracking and sharing what we do. 

All but two of the sheep have found new homes, so I've been giving lots of thought to our best options going forward. My present plan is to buy the new milk progesterone test (which helps identify when a cow is in heat as well as confirming a pregnancy) and then have Sasha bred with sex-selected Jersey semen: this gives us a 90% chance of having a heifer calf, which we can then raise as our second milk cow. If all goes well, we will do this again (and again) and raise Dexter/Jersey cross house cows for sale to other small holders: halter broke and trained, they will be a good addition to the farm revenues, but not be a whole lot of work, and we have the advantage of being able to keep our little herd closed, improving bio security. 

That's the current thinking, anyway. It might change ... But I think we will give it a try and see how things go. Sasha is such a great dual purpose cow, I'd love to share her legacy with others. :)

Milk! Cream!

Sasha's baby is doing really well ... Up and about and eating. We are getting 2-3 litres of milk daily, with plenty for the calf, so I'm happy about that. Sasha is getting beet pulp, alfalfa cubes and alfalfa pellets as supplemental feed, and some time out on the grass most days ... The remaining hay is quite weary looking and there isn't much grass yet, so the extra boost from the pelleted feed is a big plus. 

Yesterday's milk had a whole lot of cream on top ... Butter is on the horizon! Today's milk is in the fridge separating: it generally takes overnight for the cream to all separate out, with Dexter milk anyway. I had a couple of glasses of whole fresh cold milk today and it was fabulous!

See all that cream on top? 

Yum!

And we have a baby bull calf!

The Reluctant Farmer told me this morning that Sasha seemed really uncomfortable, moving around a lot and she was bellowing a little. I thought perhaps she wanted her hay topped up, or let out to eat, but then I thought … no, that doesn’t sound like the “give me food” bellow. That sounds like the “I’m pissed off” bellow.

I was still in bed (I have to sleep extra these days) an hour or two later and realized that the sounds outside had changed. I got up and looked out the window and … yup! Baby calf! She had *just* delivered and was licking him dry.

It’s a boy – I had hoped for a girl, so we could have a second house cow, but this is a half mini-Hereford calf, and I think that we probably wouldn’t have gotten a lot of milk from a Hereford/Dexter cross – though I was willing to try it out. I have other options … and this baby (it’s a “J” year, should we call him Jerky? I think we’ll have to discuss this one a bit) will have two summers and a winter to enjoy life in our pastures.

For those looking for the “signs of calving” pictures – here is her udder this morning … super shiny and hugely full:

I’ll need to help her get some of that milk out and massage her udder to help ease the edema … but that can wait until everyone has had some time to settle.

So yeah, yesterday’s images of a full udder and a slightly sloppy hind end – that’s what Sasha looks like the day before calving. Of course every cow is a bit different … I know dairy cows tend to bag up even more staggeringly (I’ve seen pictures, good heavens, I can’t imagine how those cows cope with such a huge udder swinging under them!) often leaking milk out of their udder just before they calve, and most cows get even looser in the hind end. Sasha had only minimal goopiness, too – so I had actually thought we might be a few more days yet. Guess this is what it looks like for her! I’m glad I got the pictures, so I’ll know for next time.

Time to head back out and see if the calf has found the calfeteria yet. :)

Calf Watch

It’s nearly time! For those, like me, who scour the internet for clues about “when will she calve” and “signs of calving in a Dexter”, I’ll post some photos and contribute what I can to the General Pool of Knowledge.

Sasha’s udder is filling up…

And she’s awfully loose in the hind end…

But she hasn’t tried to kill me yet (she just about gored me the night before George the Calf was born, I was trying to get her into the barn and she was NOT interested in cooperating with me), so it must be a little while yet.

I had thought we’d see a calf last week … but obviously not. She’s lying down more often (I saw the calf kick through her side the other day, which was really cool) but still eating and chewing her cud. She will most likely go off her feed and get pissy about having me near her, and then we’ll know it’s time. Her udder will likely get even more full (poor girl) and shiny, and there will likely be a lot of slimy discharge from her backside – that’s your “get ready it’s time” warning, if you notice it. If I see her down on her side, I’ll know she’s well into the process, though the first calf she delivered here simply slid out as she stood in the pasture. She was on her side labouring with George though, until I tried to convince her to move up to the barnyard … at which point she got extremely annoyed and actually ran at me with her head lowered (I moved and said “okay, okay, you do your thing, I understand, really, I do”). And in the morning, there was a calf in the field!

I have her in the barnyard this year, so I can keep a much closer eye on things as they progress. In the past, she wasn’t as tame, and she was further out (two calves ago she actually gave birth back in the trees and hid the baby for at least three or four days before we saw it). This year I’m taking some pictures and keeping a much closer eye on her – I want to document what her particular indications of calving are, so I know for next time. Every cow is a little different, so it’s important to pay close attention and keep track.

Anyone wanna guess when the baby will show up?

New watering strategy for the stock

The shape of the pastures and barnyard is an evolving thing, still. I would like it if we could just figure it out and stick with one good, workable design … but we are farm rookies, really. Every year we discover something else that sounded like a good idea until we had to live with it for a whole winter.

The impetus for this current change is that I wanted a way to have the water trough ‘downhill’ from the house, so that the water cubes we have to capture rainwater from the roof can be hooked up to the trough all summer and keep it filled without any intervention from us. Lots of fresh water, no work for the humans, that’s a good deal, right?

I also wanted it positioned so that in the winter we don’t have to run the water heater’s extension cord through the barnyard. It gets stepped on, unplugged, and generally abused when it is in the way of animal traffic, so there needed to be a way to go around. The spot downhill where the water could go for the summer would work well in that regard, but there’s just one problem: sharing.

In the past, we’ve kept the sheep and cows completely separate all winter. They run together in the summer, sharing the pasture, and they get along just fine (the calf chases the sheep around sometimes, but it’s all in good fun), but in the winter it is important to feed the two separately, or the cows will bully the sheep away from the hay. Also, after the lambs arrive there definitely needs to be a place to get away from the Big Creatures.

What we did before was keep them completely separated, with the water trough under a fence so that one half of it was available for the cows, and the other for the sheep. This works, mostly, but there are always headaches of one kind or another.

The solution (well, the solution we’re going to test out this winter) will be to have the water in the new watering pen area, and everyone will walk over there to get a drink. It isn’t very far from the feeders and shelters, and keeping the animals walking a little bit in the winter is good for them, so that’s a feature, actually. The cows will have their winter shelter and pasture area,  like before, and the sheep will have theirs … and there will be a passageway into the sheep pen the sheep can fit through but the cows can’t. That way everyone can get to the water, and the sheep can go wherever they like … and get away from the cows when they need to.

Today I got the fence up around the new watering pen – The Boy had gotten one end fenced and most of the posts put in, so all I needed to do was stretch the wire and staple it on, put up the gate and pound in one additional post. I always end up redesigning the solutions when I’m outside working, and as I was moving fences today I realized that with one small shift in the position of a gate, I could eliminate a whole lot of work and at the same time meet the requirement that the animals be able to get from any of the pastures back to the barnyard and watering pen. As it stands now, they can get from any of the three main pastures to the barnyard area, which has shelter for them from the sun or from a summer storm and has access to the water area as well. We have a fourth pasture that will have to be treated as an extension of it’s neighbour for now: it needs some more fence work done on it to be sheep-secure anyway, so there’s no urgency there.

The good news is that for the remainder of the summer, the water should be a low-maintenance thing … as long as the water barrel is full and the float valve doesn’t get knocked loose, we’re good to go. There are some finishing touches necessary – the float valve needs to be screwed in place, the fence needs barbed wire run along the top and bottom (we have discovered that woven wire alone does not stand up to the cows, dogs, and sheep – they lean on it or wiggle under it and in no time it’s bent and useless), and there’s one spot at the end where the wire didn’t quite reach that needs some boards put across it for reinforcement. However, what did get done is a good day’s work, so now I can sit down and knit with a clean conscience.

Making Cheese

I love cheese. We eat a ridiculous amount of cheese in this household, actually, and since we have a cow, it seems reasonable that I should learn how to make cheese.

My husband gave me this cheese making kit awhile back, and now that we have milk, it’s time to start using it!

I made a batch of feta the other day and it’s in the fridge in brine. It’s kind of … melting, though, which I have researched. Apparently that means I didn’t let the cheese cure long enough before soaking it (which I didn’t), so I know what to do next time. It’s still delicious, if a bit soft – I think I’ll make salad dressing out of it.

Today I made cheddar. Well, I’ve started it: the culture and curd and draining the whey is all done, and the cheese is now being squished by a few of my husband’s exercise weights. It looks promising, anyway, and the curds I tasted were yummy, so I think we’re on the right track. This one has to age for a few weeks, which should be interesting. It needs to age in a cool spot – we don’t really have any cool spots (the fridge is too cold, the house too warm), so I think I’ll probably try the cooler with a small ice pack and see if I can get that to the right temperature.

I did a bit of reading on what to do with the whey – the liquid left over after the cheese curds come out of the milk. It’s actually quite sweet, and you can use it to make bread or to cook pasta, and the dogs and cats love it. I’ve given some to the pets, as it’s too hot to bake bread right now, but I’ll try that soon. I also found that you can make ricotta cheese from the leftover whey, so I did that today and it is amazing! Soft, creamy smooth cheese from the leftovers of making *other* cheese, and you are still left with a nutritious broth you can use for cooking or baking or whatever.

Neat, eh?

Dairy Day

It was a dairy day at our house today.

This morning, Sasha was in a nasty mood. Crabby, irritable, kicking – and worse, she managed to step in a pile of fresh manure just before milking, so those kicks were messy. Ugh. I did manage to get milk cleanly into the bucket – but there was a lot of washing and rewashing going on!

Once I got myself hosed off and into clean clothes, I decided today was a good day to try pasteurizing the milk. We’ve just had it raw before, and I still will do that some of the time, but my family are not all adapted to the taste of fresh raw milk, and I’m hoping pasteurization (plus watering it down some) will make it taste more like the store milk they are all accustomed to. I got out my cheese making kit – which was a gift from my husband almost two years ago and has sat unused because I wasn’t milking and didn’t want to make cheese with store milk – and found the thermometer it came with. Perfect for pasteurizing as it sits away from the side of the pan and reads the temperature of the liquid. Carla Emery told me what to do, and it was so simple!

Milk pasteurized, it was time to start on the cheese. I had to hunt around a bit for the rennet and cultures, but they were right where they ought to be, in the freezer. I had about 2 litres of milk ready for cheese making which is half a batch, according to the recipes in the kit, and I opted for feta as my first cheese: doesn’t need curing, and it’s something we like. Well, was that ever fun!

All you do is pasteurize the milk (that step is optional, actually, but I did this time as I wanted to be absolutely sure I was growing the right things in the milk culture) and then let it cool down to where it is just warm, add the culture and let it sit in the oven (which is just the right temperature, since ours has a pilot light) for an hour. After that hour, it’s turned into something like thick yogourt, and you slice it with a knife into chunks then give it a bit of a stir. Warm the oven briefly then shut it off and put the pot back in at the slightly warmer temperature, stirring every 10 minutes to help the cheese separate from the whey. Strain into a colander, and voila! Cheese! Add some salt, make the brine (feta soaks in salt water) and you’ve got fresh home made cheese.

Amazing.

The unsalted stuff tastes a lot like the paneer I often make (which is just milk scalded to just under boiling then mixed with a bit of vinegar until it curdles … strain it out and it’s cheese you can use in Indian sauces to make a quick and yummy supper).  Salted, it tastes like … feta!

In further dairy adventures, I made butter from the cream I’d skimmed off all that milk.

Butter on the fork and in the jar on the lower left, buttermilk in the jar on the upper left. Carla says you can make cheese with the buttermilk too – which could be interesting!

And, just to round out today’s dairy adventures, I’m having kalvdans with crabapple jelly as I write this. It’s textured very much like cheesecake, actually, with the same sort of very plain flavour (I made it according to a local friend’s recipe – just cream and colostrum whipped together with some sugar, then baked like a custard). Cheesecake gets served with a fruit sauce, so I figured jelly would be a good quick substitute. Yum!

And now, of course, I’m tired and ready to sit down with my spindle and audio book and rest as the cool evening breeze comes in. We have a lot of smoke from some nearby wildfires (not dangerously nearby, but close enough we get the smoke) so I didn’t have the fans going all day today like I usually do. The smoke has eased up some now, though, so we can open up the windows and let the cool air in.

Ahh. Summer.

George says hi

A Day in the Life of George the Calf

Mama and I slept in the barn last night. I think maybe we’re supposed to do this every night, but I dunno, I only got here yesterday morning, so this was my first whole night in the outside world.

The barn is dark. There is lots of straw on the ground, and there’s this skinny place where I fit nicely and then Mama has lots of room on her side of the stall. She had some crunchy stuff in the food bin at bedtime from the Person who comes in here all the time to check on us, and Mama definitely seems to like that crunchy stuff. I dunno why she would want that, milk’s good enough for anyone.

I get all my milk from Mama. The front two milk dispensers are hard to eat from though, they are so huge they fall out of my mouth. I just keep trying until I get one of the back ones, they work way better. In the morning the Person came and put Mama in the skinny place where I’d been sleeping, and gave her more crunchy stuff in the food bin.

The Person put this thing on my head that pinched my nose when I pulled. I pulled anyway, ‘cause who wants a thing on their head? Well, I suppose Mama wears one but mine’s blue and hers is black and I think hers is nicer. The thing had a big rope attached and the Person tied me to a post up by Mama’s head. Mama could see me but she kept bellowing for me to come closer. I didn’t wanna come closer, I wanted to pull the stupid thing off my head. I kept pulling and pulling but it never came off. It’s weird.

The Person got milk out of those front dispensers that didn’t work for me. She has hands though, and thumbs, and that probably makes it easier. Mama did some kicking and fussing but the Person just tied her kicking foot to a post and talked to her and said it would be better once she was done and really it was all okay and the baby was right there and I suppose she meant me. Because I was right there. Mama bellowed anyway.

After the Person poured the milk into a covered bucket, she took the thing off my head and put me back in the stall. Maybe if I’m good while she milks, then I get the thing taken off my head? I’ll have to see if this happens again tomorrow.

Mama got let out of the skinny place and then the Person opened the gate to our stall and … MAMA WENT OUTSIDE! She left me there! It was all nice in the barn, I couldn’t see why she would go out, but there was this tall green stuff and she wanted to eat it. I guess she doesn’t just eat the crunchy things in the food bin. Anyway, Mama kept bellowing so eventually I went out with her, and it was nice and breezy.

Then it got hot. It got really hot. I just lay there in the grass sleeping and panting. Mama ate a bunch of the green stuff and had some water, and every time a cat or dog came near she chased them off.

The Person came out a few times and talked to Mama, and she came and stroked my side and talked to me, but I dunno what she was saying. I just wanted to stay where I was and not move, it was too hot to do anything.

After it cooled off in the evening, the Person came back and put the blue thing back on my head. I dunno why she keeps bugging me like this, it was comfortable in the grass, and I didn’t want to go to the barn. I didn’t even want to stand up. She wouldn’t leave me be, though, so eventually I stood up and then she pulled on the rope and I just had to walk to the barn, even though I didn’t want to! The Person put me in the stall and took the thing off … so maybe if I am good and go in the stall the thing always comes off? Hmm. Mama didn’t have a rope pulling on her, she just came in by herself and ate the crunchy stuff in the food bin and the Person shut the gate and brought Mama more water. Mama let the Person scratch her head. I don’t get it: Mama chases the dogs away if they even look at me, but she lets the Person put that stupid blue thing on my head. Why does she let this Person near me when nobody else can come close? It’s a mystery.

Well, I suppose the barn is where we sleep again tonight. I wonder if the Person will come in the morning with more crunchy stuff for Mama and make me wear the stupid blue thing again.

Probably.

Oh well, once that part is over I can go outside with Mama. That’ll be nice.

I think now I’m gonna sleep though. It’s hard work being a calf.