Friday, July 26, 2013



Days have been hot around here.
Little Lana has been taking her naps in the mornings.


I figured most of you  have never seen a cow sleeping.





Usually you see a cow laying like Novella here,
with their head up, but I guess this posture is like us sitting down.

Head flat on the ground is really considered resting.

It can be kind of spooky to walk up on one of them while they are like this, quite frankly the first thought is "are they dead?" because it really could be so.
No one expects to find a dead cow around but it does happen.

Lana here is a deep sleeper. I have gotten used to seeing her, "sleeping like the dead" so have the chickens.

She's pretty cute!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

 Everyday I milk Mattie, two times a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening.
I get 1.5 gallons each milking. That's 3 gallons a day!

21 gallons of  milk a week  means we get to have fresh, raw butter around here.
Butter is the easiest dairy product to make.

All you do is skim the cream off the milk.
Any milk that has not been homogenized will separate out after around 24 hours in the fridge. The longer it stays undisturbed the more it separates.

So.. I just get my little dipper......





 and dip out the cream.  That left over milk could be used as low fat  milk for drinking or made into something, but I usually just give it to my plants.
From 1.5 gallons of milk I got 1.5 quarts of cream
(which means we should watch how much milk we are drinking because were gonna get fat)


I put the cream into the food processor, I can only do a little at a time.
 That's about all that I do at a time,
 Turn on the processor and do something else for,.. say around 5 minutes.
 After a little while you will notice a change in the sound of the processor. That means the butter has formed, and everything has separated into butter and buttermilk (real butter milk is just the leftover liquid from the butter making process).
 Here you can see the butter and the buttermilk.
 We need to strain the liquid out.
Get out  your colander line it with a piece of cloth and pour it all in. You will also want to rinse the butter with cold water.
 If you don't, your butter will taste sort of sour.

 Some of us are too busy to wait, so we just help the process along by squeezing the butter.
Here you go! butter, just scrape it into a container with a rubber spatula, salt it if you like, put it in a container and refrigerate.

Good News, raw butter has been found to not be bad for your health. It is the homogenization process which changes the molecular structure of the protein that is harmful.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/07/why-is-butter-better.aspx

Yum!!