Home dairying

Oh the joys of having our own cow! So far I've made gallons and gallons of yogurt. Brian has perfected ice cream in at least 4 flavors and he's plotting his next creation as I write. I've made baked custard and Rennet custard. And there are several one gallon bags in the freezer filled with lovely yellow butter balls.

So for my next trick I decided to tackle cottage cheese. I read the directions in the Rennet package. It didn't look all that difficult. I thought I sort of remembered the process from when I was little and my mother made cottage cheese. So after the morning milking I strained the milk into a big stainless steel pot. Added the required number of Rennet drops and buttermilk. Then I placed a linen towel over the top and placed it carefully on the counter to wait.

Wait. Oh yeah how long did it say I had to wait? 12 hours... let's see it's was 11am by the time I got everything in the pot... so it should be curd by 11 pm. No big deal I thought. I have to work tomorrow so it will good to stay up tonight and get "flipped".

So at 11pm I was cutting my curd, heating it to 115 degrees slowly in a water bath, stirring every 5 minutes so the curds didn't stick together. Then straining off the whey. Plunging the curd in ice water. Hanging it to drain. At 2 am I decided it was just going to have to be drained enough because I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. I tucked it in the fridge and crawled into bed.

This morning I added salt, pepper and cream. Yep that's right cottage cheese is supposed to be swimmin' in cream. Then I tasted it. YUMMY! It's going to be great with fruit and for stuffing pasta. Thanks Hazel. :^)

Butter day

One day a week I clear the milk refrigerator. First I skim off all the cream, then I re-bottle about two gallons of milk into one quart milk bottles. The smaller bottles fit in our inside fridge better and they are easier to handle for my mother who has arthritis. After all the cream is skimmed, I start making butter.
No I don't sit in my rocker and churn like granny on the "Beverly Hillbillies". I use the blender. While the butter's in the blender I empty the excess milk into a "Pig Pale" to be carried out to the hogs. Then I wash all the empty one gallon jars and put them back on the shelf for next week.
You can hear the change in the blender sound when the butter starts to rise. Then I run it through the strainer to remove the buttermilk. I save a little for cooking and send the rest to the piggies. Then it's rinsed with clean cold water and put into a bowl. When all of the cream is butter, I "work" the butter to get as much liquid out of it as possible. Then I add salt, shape it into butter balls and drop the butter into ice water to firm it up.
One butter ball goes in the butter dish and the rest in the freezer.

I'm hoping to have enough butter put by in the freezer to keep us through the time when Hazel is dry this winter. 
Here are some of my buttery creations swimming in their ice bath.

Of Dairy Maids and Dairy men

It is my considered opinion that the advent of the milking machine was when the family dairy moved from the domain of women to the realm of man.


When I was younger I milked a cow by hand. Resting my head against the warm side of Bossie the cow as streams of steaming milk splashed rhythmically into the pail was ... a Zen experience. When the cow was dry I'd turn her out and carried the bucket of warm frothy milk to the house. Simple, uncomplicated, relaxing.
 
 Now my husband uses a milking machine to milk our cow, Hazel. The machine involves a vacuum pump and its idiosyncrasies, lots of mechanical parts, enough hoses to confuse an octopus and a stainless steel tank. Brian finds the whole contraption fascinating. He actually enjoys fine tuning the connections and settings. He talks constantly of finding the perfect length for the hoses and whether or not the sling is really necessary. When he starts talking mechanics and physics my brain turns off and I find myself "Uh Huh" ing him. You know - nodding and making little noises of agreement while not really paying much attention to what he said. I tried using the milking the machine once. By the time I was done I was a frustrated, nervous wreck.
 
To add  insult to injury, when the surge is full of milk I can barely lift it. Even Brian uses the little trailer pulled by the lawn tractor to haul the milker to and from the barn, but he can at least lift the stainless steel surge up into the wagon.

So there you go... when milking started involving machines it became man's work. Because men, in my experience, like machines and those doggone milk cans are HEAVY!

There is nothing like real butter!

Today I made butter from the cream I've been skimming off of Hazel's milk. It is yummy!

I was in a hurry so I used the food processor to "churn". It worked pretty well, though the butter didn't clump like I expected it to. I had to strain the butter out of the butter milk. Then I put it in a bowl of cold water and gathered it together into a ball. After I had all of the cream churned, I worked the butter to remove any water or butter milk. I ended up with about a pound of beautiful yellow butter.
Now I need to make some fresh bread to go under it!

A whirlwind tour of Illinois

So we needed a vacation. We got up early fed and watered all the animals extra well. We talked our son in law into walking the dogs. Got my son to agree to gather the eggs, put up the hens and generally keep things on an even keel and we were off to Illinois.

Why Illinois? Well because we want a milk cow and our friends at Green Acres Dairy happened to have one they would be willing to sell. They also wanted some feeder pigs from us. So we packed up the piglets and headed northwest. I forget sometimes how flat the upper 2/3rds of Indiana and Illinois are and just how barren it all seems in the dead of winter. Good thing Brian and I had much farm "stuff" to talk over on the trip. Otherwise Brian would have had to listen to me sing along to the radio!

We arrived at Green Acres Farm midmorning Keith and Donna came out and we all helped unload the piglets into their new barn home. Nice digs! Lots of straw and Freddy the herd dog really wanted to play with them! Then we got reaquainted with the three pigs we had sold them earlier in the year: Cagney, Lacey and Mad Max. They are really growing! After the pig rangling Donna invited us in to warm up.

Later we went out to meet the cows. There were black one, black and white ones, mousey gray/brown ones, red ones and golden tan ones. We found the perfect Jersey for us. She's not to big, not too young and very friendly. That last one is most important since this will be Brian's first experience with a milk cow.

After the tour of the milking mommas we headed in for lunch. Home made chili with crackers and big glasses of raw milk followed by home made blueberry buckle. Yummy!

I spent some time picking Donna and Keiths brains about marketing all natural pork to restaurants - article to follow in the Red Wattle Hog Association Newsletter - Spring edition. Then it was time to head on north to visit our friend Clyde in Rockford.

We took a detour out to see the sows who are expecting before we took off. They looked really happy in their pasture with the Piggy Palace Keith built.

Here are couple of pics of the happy pigs at Green Acres Dairy - Oh and of Keith and Donna!