How to Use Up All This Milk?

On Monday, I attempted to use up some of the accumulated milk. We've ended up with about eight gallons of surplus milk over the last two weeks, and the refrigerators are bursting. (We do have our massive new-to-us commercial refrigerator, but that seems like overkill for eight gallons of milk.)

I had ordered cheesemaking supplies, so immediately made some mozzarella. Initially, I was extremely pleased: a full gallon of milk went into the large pot. Two jars of milk emptied! How great!

Mozzarella is extremely easy. Within a few minutes, I had curds and whey.

Shortly after that, I drained the whey, heated the curds a bit, and was ready to stretch the cheese.

I ended up, for a gallon of milk, with a blob of cheese (no longer raw) I could hold in my hand. Not very much!

And, to make matters worse, I didn't actually empty two jars: I just converted the liquid from usable, delicious milk, into less versatile whey.

I mean, whey is good for making grains more digestible, and encouraging lacto-fermentation of sauerkraut. It's a great thing to have. But, since my cabbages didn't grow, I don't have any cabbage for sauerkraut, and it will take me some time to use up almost a gallon of whey in 1/8 cup increments.

Undaunted, I decided to try out my new raw yogurt culture. Except the instructions say that, to culture properly, the yogurt must be kept between 70 and 75 degrees. "Put it in the oven with a pilot light." My toaster oven doesn't have a pilot light, and I've never, in my married life, lived in a house that was kept between 70 and 75 degrees. If it had said 60 to 80 degrees, I may have had a chance.

Happily, I also had a kefir culture (kefir creates a thin yogurt-like food, great for smoothies and very healthy, with less effort than yogurt). I have that processing currently, but it will be some time before I can make much milk into kefir.

Which leaves butter. I skimmed cream off some of the older milk, put it in the mixer, and turned the mixer to medium. The instructions said that I should have butter in about ten minutes.

An hour later, no butter.

I went trouble-shooting online. My cream had been refrigerator temperature, and, apparently, it is supposed to be between 55 and 65 degrees for optimal butter formation. Oops.

I let it sit overnight, and I think it did, maybe a little, make butter. There was a buttermilk colored liquid in the bottom of the bowl. At that point, sadly, none of the mix tasted very good, so I donated it to the pigs.

The plan to clear the refrigerator of excess milk is now this: skim cream off the oldest jars of milk. Put the milk aside for future spraying on our land. Use the cream for cooking and eating.

I like this plan.

Phil spent some time working, with the new tractor. I had quickly grown discouraged with how difficult it was to pull or push the garden cart, full of manure (slightly composted), from the windrow up to my garden. I mean, I could move the cart, but I had to dig deep from old athletic muscles to make it happen.

But the tractor! With a bucket! It could scoop from the pile, and drop where needed! Perfect.

Except it wasn't quite that easy. The "road tires" on the tractor found it hard to grip the ground enough to actually scoop compost. Phil made it happen, but it was tricky. Then, the amount of time to maneuver around to get the compost, then wend his way through the trees: it wasn't nearly as fast or easy as I expected.

I was bummed! Here was this great piece of equipment, and it wasn't working as easily or well as I wanted it to! And the manure, so lovingly prepared and so longed for as finished compost, was still just mucky manure.

Phil encouraged me, though, that scooping manure was not one of the main reasons we bought the tractor. And the task did get done, (as with all things on the farm, though,) just not as swiftly as I expected.

Phil went back later, all boys happily accompanying (can you spot all four in the photo above?), and scooped into our little green cart, pulled behind. This reduced the amount of time maneuvering, but not enough to make the towing-and-unloading worthwhile.

In the evening, as the night sky gears up for the Leonid meteor shower, I saw four shooting stars in casual observation. So cool!

On the downside, I had all the boys get dressed in warm clothes and head outside with me. After all, the moon had set, the night was clear—how many great opportunities like this would we have?

Abraham, chilly from the start, gave up after about five minutes. "Will I NEVER see a shooting star?" he asked, tearfully.

Happily the Leonids should run until November 24th, so he should have another chance.