Making the Most of My Milk

We are swimming in milk!  Hard to believe we can all be getting so much after the low production in the winter months.

I walked out to the cooler this morning, counted quart jars, and put together my work plan for the day.  I started with the Cheddar, because it takes the longest.

Using a turkey roaster to make Cheddar cheese

While the milk was heating to the required 88º, I started heating milk for yogurt.  I have to pasteurize the milk for yogurt, since I don't want the natural (good) bacteria in raw milk to compete with the l. Bulgaricus culture that makes my yogurt so thick.  Very often gelatin or powdered milk is used to make the yogurt set up well, to have a custard-y consistency.  But Bulgarian yogurt is naturally thick, so it needs to be the only bacteria in the milk.

Milk heating to 180º

I really have a LOT of milk, and I skim the cream from the milk I use for making kefir.  So I have a lot of cream as well.  Time to make Lemon Ice Cream.  Yum!

Built in chiller, no work ice cream

While it may be romantic to hand crank an old ice cream machine with ice and salt packed around the cylinder, I love my Cuisinart ice cream maker.  It has a built in chiller.  Make the base, pour it in, turn the knob to 45 minutes and walk away!

And last but not least, I took the time and effort to make ricotta today.  When the pigs were here, they got it all, but they have gone to the butcher, and so there is all that whey!  And the chickens can take just so much of it.  So I brought two big pots of whey to a boil, added vinegar and strained it through a butter muslin bag to catch the small, delicate curds.

Ricotta cheese draining

So what is my reward for all of this work?  For breakfast, I had a two-egg omelet (from my chickens) with plenty of butter, and filled with homemade Cheddar cheese.  Delicious!

For dinner, I'm having a casserole made with a layer of low carb noodles and chile (my beef), then a thick layer of ricotta made fresh today, then more noodles and chile, and a topping of grated Cheddar.  I'm not sure what to call it.  Hopefully I will call it "good!"

Yum!

Many hands make light work - sort of!

I cannot believe what the crew has accomplished around here!  The garden is nearly completely planted - or anyway we have done as much as we can for the time being.  Now we must just wait on Mother Nature.  There are a few more rows of stuff to plant.  I like to wait with beans, as they really do like warm soil.  And I always plant tomatoes and peppers the first week of June, after all chances of frost are past. 

The experiment with the potatoes is still just an experiment.  They went in very late.  Androo is focusing Adam's and Clay's efforts on them - keeping them clean, hilling them and hopefully getting a good harvest - for a good return on our investment in time and organic seed potatoes!

We still have a little old fencing to clear up, and I'm hoping we can move the beef cattle to the new paddocks on Friday.  We need to get them on some new ground.   They have eaten up almost everything available in the south-most paddocks and it is time to get them out of there.

I had a pretty slow day today, took it easy.  Was supposed to go to a picnic in my new neighborhood, but it got canceled due to the rain.  So even though I missed being with my new neighbors, I am very thankful for the rain.  It is making the grass grow, something every farmer using rotational grazing loves to see.

Dealing with adversity

My farming partner has quit the operation.  He was falling farther and farther behind, missing more and more days.  I was not surprised when he walked out.  He is feeding the pigs daily until they are shipped on June 5, then he is done. 

The greenhouse was in tough shape.  I took it over, replanted 2,000 seeds 2-1/2 weeks ago, and we began potting up the first of them in only a week!  Some of them are already salable, thank goodness.  I am missing a lot of the early market, but I will make up a good bit of it at the tail end. 

Krystal, Androo, Kim, Clay and Lisa are all working when they can.  Of course none of them is full time, but between them, they are doing a great job.  A little here, a little there, it all adds up!

Krystal will finish potting up and labeling the second seeding of greenhouse plants today.  She literally saved the greenhouse.  There will be enough sales to cover the expenses, so there won't be a loss out there. 

Androo is here all day Friday and half of Saturday.  He has worked here for years, so he knows the ropes.  He is supervising the others, and he is quite good at fencing and the water system.  His expertise is invaluable.  He is helping with the garden layout.

Kim is learning the greenhouse, got all of the "tender" seeds done yesterday.  Melons, cucumbers and squash are the ones that don't like to be disturbed by knocking them out of a pot when planting, so the seeds go into special certified organic biodegradable pots that go right into the garden.  (The little peat pots most use have an unapproved glue in them, so we do not use them in our organic operation.)  He is also doing some cleaning and organizing, and has given Krystal some further instructions on how to milk.  He is very efficient in the dairy. 

Lisa is very small (wears size 4), but she is strong!  No one else could run the tiller (Kim has a back problem, Krystal tried and couldn't do it, and Androo is only here on Fridays), so she gave it a try.  I had removed irrigation lines, mowed the north half of garden right down to the dirt with my Bad Boy, then took up the trash with the Sears mower using the grass catcher.  Lisa then used the tiller to get that part of the garden in shape.  What a miracle!! 

Clay finished up the last of the onions on Tuesday.  There are at least six rows of onions out there.  We ALWAYS run out of onions.  Hopefully this year will be different.

We are about a month behind.  Other farmers are already selling lettuce, spinach and radishes.  Our early stuff just went in, and we still have to plant turnips, beets and the large greens like kale and collards.  But we will catch up.  Thanks to an excellent crew (and putting in about 16 hours a day by yours truly), we will triumph over adversity.  That is the name of the game in farming.

Some days turn out better than you expect.

Life has been pretty hectic lately.  Steve has quit the partnership.  Enough said.

Thank goodness for a couple of very good new milkers.  Krystal is taking over in the greenhouse and much of the garden in addition to milking twice a day, eight days out of 14.

I called Androo, who has worked here for five years but quit to go back to school full time, and left a message on his voice mail that I was crying - for him to come back!  Oh, Androo, I said, I need you!  He called me back a couple of hours later to tell me he was available for up to 16 hours per week, as a job he didn't like had not panned out, and so he had another that afforded him more time for a few hours with me at the farm.  He started on Friday, and the results are just short of miraculous.  Lettuce is in, radishes are in, he started on the onions that were sprouted in the greenhouse.  Krystal carried on with the onions today.  It is starting to look like a garden. Good news.

I managed to move the Highlands to a fresh pasture today, all by myself.  I was a little nervous about doing it alone.  They must be feeling more at home here now, because I had them moved in about 10 minutes.  They are happily munching on a fresh paddock with grass nearly to their knees.  Beef cattle are different than dairy cattle.  We are not measuring their performance by how much milk they give on a daily basis, so we can leave them on a paddock a little longer.  They are really eating them down, and that is very good for the soil and the grass and herbs that grow there.  The eight paddocks I'm using for them were pretty poor, but they are already exhibiting the goodness of that hard grazing by the Highlands.  So that is more good news.

My doorbell quit.  (Yes, I know, totally unrelated, but it follows the theme.)  I went out on the internet to see how to fix it, took the cover off, then got interrupted (this was about a week ago), and never got back to it.  Troubleshooting guide said it was not the wiring, but probably the transformer, since neither bell worked. Today when Allen showed up to clean, he rang the bell and it worked.  So did the one on the front door.  I did not question it.  I put the cover back on it, praised the powers that be, and was thankful for more good news.

I was having trouble with my alarm system.  The first person I talked to a few months ago said that it couldn't be fixed over the phone, that I would have to have a technician out (and pay for it, of course).  It has gotten worse, and I couldn't program in a new code for a friend who is staying here.  After many calls, and talking to several different people, the third one called.  I said, "Do I have to tell ANOTHER person the whole story?"  Yes, he said.  He had me go to the panel.  "Push these numbers."  "Now push these numbers."  "Now try to program your new number."  It worked!  You have no idea how happy I was!  More good news.

Okay, here is the final good news.  My friend Lisa, who will be here until the fall, helping out with garden and greenhouse on weekends and filling in to milk every now and then, called after her work day today to tell me she had found POUNDS of morel mushrooms, did I want any?  Is the sky blue?  Is the Pope catholic?  Be still, my heart, soon I will be eating morels sauteed in butter.  What a bedtime snack is that?  BEST good news!!!

Hope your day held some good news as well.

I'm ferpused . . .

My mom used to say that she was ferpused when she was very worn out after a busy day.  I have no idea where the word came from, and I am probably not spelling it correctly, but there you have it.  Today, this evening, I am ferpused.

We have had some greenhouse problems - the winter lettuce hogged space that was sorely needed for plant starts, and the temperature was never right - either too hot for the lettuce or too cold for the pepper starts.  Today, I looked around and told Steve that we needed to play catch-up and fast, or we were really going to feel the revenue pinch.  Steve started hauling out flats of lettuce that could be transplanted in the garden.  I grabbed seedling trays and started planting - the end of April, and I'm planting!

I went over all of the poorly germinated trays of peppers and tomatoes and had Steve pot up anything that was worth salvaging.  I continued to plant - and plant - and plant.  I finally quit a few minutes ago, having planted about 1,600 seeds.

Like I said, I'm ferpused.  I just hope that they will germinate and grow fast enough to profit from the late plant market.  These will be nice and fresh at a time when most of the vendors' plants are looking tired and leggy.  I can hope.

Early to bed tonight.

What's happening on the farm . . .

My son Jim is going in on the beef cattle.  He has come up twice now to help with the operation.  Today they pulled wire for the first of four paddocks for the whole herd.  There is still a lot of work to be done, but at least we can get them off of the dairy cows' paddocks.  We need every paddock for the dairy herd, because we are about out of hay, and the pastures are nearly a month behind schedule.  At last, they are greening up, but the grass is still short.  When the grass is short, the cows get a smaller mouthful of grass with every bite.  Diary cows need good feed pretty much continuously to provide milk.

We need a few days in a row of sunshine and some warm weather.  I hope the forecast is correct - we have two days of 80º weather coming this week according to Weather Underground.

Did you know that if every farmer farmed the way we do, they would stop global warming?   Being raised outside on grass, not grain means that the animals are sequestering carbon all of the time.  Their hooves tear up the land (no tilling necessary) and of course they are dropping loads of manure and urine on the soil.  This means that they help to recover marginal land, such as the sandy soil I have here on my farm.  There are a couple of books out there now on the subject.  More and more farmers are starting to use rotational grazing.  It is cheaper, too.  And the meat is healthier for us.  Is there a down side?  I suppose, because it uses a lot of land, but if you put them on marginal land that wasn't good for raising any crops without using massive amounts of chemical fertilizers and weed killers (poor soil grows a lot of weeds), then I don't even see that as a downside.

The farmer who sold us the Highland cattle said they are very good foragers, and they will love all of the little small trees that are dotting the east side of my farm.  That land has just been sitting there unused and ungrazed since 2001.  This is what the paddock looks like today.  I am hoping to see lush green grass free of trees in a month!

Pasture today - lots of small trees for fodder!

Jim and Steve adding insulators to the T-posts

Jim and Steve got three strands of wire strung, and all of the insulators put on the posts.  The Highlands are not quite as docile as the dairy cattle, and so they need stronger containment.

Steve cut trees to make our corner posts.

Jim, Steve and Tashi surveying the job.

They strung the three rolls of wire on a spindle.  Clever!

Getting started with the insulators.

Steve explaining best practices to Jim.

Jim setting off to begin the job.

He's getting the hang of it.

The finished product.  Job well done!

Update on Blackie

Well, we almost lost Blackie.  We had to get two bottles of iv fluid.  She was even worse after the first one, on her side, eyes rolled back.  I was at market, and every time my cell phone rang I prayed the news would be better, instead of worse and worse and worse!  About two thirds of the way through the second iv, she finally lifted her head. 

She still would not get up.  I told the guys they had to get her standing.  She had been down close to 12 hours.  Steve said he had a winch, and Kim had some straps.  They each went home to get them.  When Steve got back, Blackie was standing.

All appears to be well.  She is milking heavily.  No more signs of milk fever.  She is getting free choice calcium.  I am hoping that the crisis has passed.  I love that old girl.