Milk Products and Milking Reflection

We spent a rainy day mostly inside. Even after a year, I remain amazed at the precipitation here: that I can go to bed to falling rain and awake to falling rain, and go through my whole day with falling rain—it feels like a mini-miracle every time it happens.

Despite the rain, the day was not without its mini-drama. Most exciting: when I picked up my waterproof jacket to go out to milk and discovered a viscous liquid oozing out of the pocket. I vaguely recalled picking up an egg from the feral chickens after we moved their pen, and since I didn't remember putting it in the egg carton, I must have put it in my pocket, where, when the jacket fell to the floor, an unheeding foot squashed the egg.

What makes this mildly embarrassing was that only yesterday I noticed that Phil, having collected the dozen or so eggs in the morning, accidentally squashed one in his pocket as he climbed out of the chicken pen. "Ha," I thought. "I better be on my guard against broken eggs in my pocket." Ha, indeed.

Yesterday was characterized by milk. First thing, I went to milk and Bianca refused to let her milk down. She had dodged behind the haybale when I went to fetch her. I may have scared her with unusually fast reflexes, as I caught her. Then, I had not let my water heat up enough when I washed her udder. Though I have used cool water in the past, it could be the combination of owner-jumping-from-behind-haybale and cold-water-on-udder prevented let down. I went to reheat the water, but nothing doing. She withheld. The rascal.

I set out some cream to warm to room temperature, and then observed in amazement that about 45 seconds in the Blendtec produced butter and buttermilk. So much faster than the hour in the mixer that eventually produced nothing.

I'm not sold on homemade butter. It is fun to feel the waxy, slippery butter, but it is extremely hard to clean it (rinsing in cold water). And any buttermilk left in, and any water, spoils the butter rapidly.

Then, too, my hands get very coated with the butter, and, though I don't have messy hand issues, it's difficult to clean off.

And I'm not sure how to salt the butter. We have good Celtic sea salt to eat, but it's too chunky to incorporate well into butter. And I sort of feel like unsalted butter is not worth eating.

Besides butter, my kefir grains finally produced a yogurt-consistency product. I like that, but the directions say to "strain out grains," and I'm not sure how to strain the grains out of a yogurt-consistency product.

We also got the information needed to register our little heifers. Based on their coloring, I was surprised to find that they have the same daddy, and their granddaddy is a bull I've heard of. So baby Beatrice has a "famous" grandpa on both her mother's side and her father's side. I was tickled to see it.

A final milk observation. I feel like I've had a barrage of character-growth issues come up over the last few weeks. It can grow exhausting, to see all the ways I don't measure up to my own ideal. There's a part of me that longs for a break.

Then I remembered my first month of milking. There were times my forearms were so sore, I would go to bed at night, dreading the morning, since I knew I would have to milk again. I'm a former athlete—I know that muscles build up through use and REST, and there was no rest for my poor arms. Morning and evening, day after day.

But as time passed, my arms grew strong, and milking now brings me great joy (except this evening, when Bianca stepped into the milk pail, the rascal!).

And I suppose that's true for my character issues, too. I can groan under the new realizations of ways I should love my husband better or serve my family or care for my animals, but, if I persevere, I will grow stronger. That's a hopeful thought.

***

In conclusion, something totally different.

Before the rain began, the boys interspersed their continued wagon rides down the driveway with a water feature.

They created a channel, digging out a meandering pathway, and ran the hose. What a life for boys!

Holons and Horrors

This morning I woke up at 5am, milked a reluctant (but obedient) Bianca an hour or so earlier than usual, and drove three hours to a workshop.

Only to arrive to find that it had been rescheduled for next week.

There was a time when I would have indulged in loud sobs in the car, and nursed my grievance and irritation for a long time. Perhaps living on the farm has changed me (or maybe it's merely maturity), but I realized I had had some good time of prayer in the car on the way down, had another three or so hours for prayer on the way back, and, in the scheme of life, the $45 needlessly spent on gas was not that important.

Still, there are things I'd rather do than spend 6 1/2 hours in the car with no purpose. I was glad to be home.

Phil was out of town most of this week, attending a conference in Mississippi on building a business. We think the conference itself was a little mismarketed—the topics discussed were not quite what we expected, and, as such, Phil said he knew most everything presented—but the people Phil met, he enjoyed thoroughly. The peanut farmer, the cheesemaker, the small orchardist, and more.

He came away excited about "holons." A holon is an enterprise that ties into your centerpiece enterprise. So if the orchard is our centerpiece enterprise, maybe we have an excess of downed apples. Pigs to eat the apples would be a good holon.

Then maybe the pigs produced a lot of manure. We could add worms to the manure to make it fertilizer (another holon), and then maybe start seedlings with the vermicompost (worm manure).

Holons seem an elegant way to manage a farm, compared to, say, cows for milk; sheep for wool; apples because I like fruit. Those are all separate enterprises.

I have had an interesting couple of days, managing all while Phil was away. Yesterday morning, for example, I got up and milked, did the chores. I tried to refill the motor home's water tank, and came out to find the area between trailers flooded, and no water in the holding tank. Could our pump have sprung a leak? And Phil out of town!

The idea of a winter without running water close to the kitchen had me almost in tears. Chloe is probably entering her last few weeks of life—every day I wake up and check to see if she has died in the night. Since she slept with me, that was a bit awkward. And I came in to find some of her fecal material on my blanket. Stripped the bed.

Jadon, apparently, hadn't eaten enough the day before, so he was groaning in agony. Soon after I stripped the bed, he threw up all over my mattress.

Isaiah was hungry, but Bethany the cow was hungry, too. We hadn't calculated properly when Phil left, and she ate through her hay. I had an extra bale, but I can't move a 1000 pound bale by myself, so I fed it, handful by handful, all day to Bethany and calves. It was fairly moldly, so she wasn't enthusiastic. Not quite a hunger strike, but large, reproachful eyes and an occasional moo let me know her feelings.

I was immensely cheered, however, when a closer inspection revealed that our pump was not broken, but, rather, a hose had been left half turned on and had sprayed for half an hour or so to create the impressive puddle in my living space. Easily mended!

That was the turning point. A few homemade caramels, with cream from our cow, and Jadon was feeling a good bit better. Isaiah finally got his breakfast, Bethany suffered through her day with sparse feed and Tyson brought her good hay today. Chloe slept in the car, and remains alive.

Even though disaster was averted, I am so relieved to have Phil back home!

Eat a Live Toad First Thing

Unlike every other night since Joe hurt his finger, last night he only woke once, needing "medicine" (homeopathy). I vaguely noticed that the trailer smelled like the heater first thing in the winter: that dusty, hot smell.

My sleeping bag! It had drifted close to our new space heater! Thankful we hadn't all cooked to a crisp in our beds, I moved the bag many feet away and fell back to sleep.

As I finished milking this morning, Joe came out to find me, sobbing. I picked him up, and we entered the house to find acrid smoke: my down sleeping bag, apparently irresistibly attracted to the space heater, had touched the hot surface and immediately charred.

A nice North Face bag, from the DINK (double income, no kids) salary days—a financial blow indeed, but it was difficult to be very upset. It could have been our lives; it could have been all our possessions. In the grand scheme of things, a ruined bag is not that big a deal.

Thankfully, the rest of the day was mellow in comparison. (Or, as I've heard, "Eat a live toad first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen the rest of the day.")

Since the weather has (so thankfully) warmed up to the upper 70s, Jadon spent the morning dragging the wagon to the top of the driveway, then riding it all the way down.

After a time, he recruited Isaiah, and the two of them took dozens of trips from the top, down as far as they could go: the gate to the animals. Where they would crash (gently) with rascally giggles.

Ashley, one of the original sheep, was in standing heat this morning. As I milked, I watched her, with Benny the ram paying attention. I have heard that lions will mate every twenty minutes around the clock for something like 24 to 48 hours. Benny the ram bested the lazy lions: I lost count, but about a half dozen copulations in the twenty minutes I milked left me amazed. How can a single dose of AI ever work?! No wonder bulls lose body condition during mating season! Wow!

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.

Gird Up the Loins of Your Mind

Sometimes I feel like I have a character trait really under control, and then it's like all the progress I had painstakingly eked out vanishes. For me, this week, that looked like a lot of grumbling in my mind. Cold hands and cold toes, growing boys with plenty of energy in a small space, the (now welcome) possibility that this will not be my dwelling much longer: it's been a challenge to remember to be thankful.

But the Lord sends his beautiful sunsets even so to this unfaithful daughter.

More painfully, the netting I had rescued the bucks from struck again. I had left it in the garden cart, parked right at the gate of the calves' pen, a place I had never the babies approach. A day later, after dusk fell, Phil noticed that Belle's ear tag was lying on the ground: intact. We assume she caught her ear on the netting, and, horrifically, to get herself loose, pulled the tag straight out of her ear.

Morning light revealed that, yes, her ear is now bisected, from the center to the tip, like a massive ear notch.

It's taken me days to even be able to write about this. It's like my character failing, a split second decision that it would take too much effort to untie the gate and push the heavy garden cart upslope, is now translated into a visual reminder of that failing. And, because she's a beautiful little heifer, I may face that failing every day for the next decade and a half. Who needs that kind of reminder not to be lazy?! Who needs that kind of deep grief (over Belle's pain, her panic, her disfigurement) over a bad choice?

She isn't dead. Absolutely, it could be worse.

But I think human error will always creep into my work, much though I may hate it. Unthinkingly this morning, after milking in extremely cold conditions, I set down the pail by the motor home and went to get a new box of jars. As I walked away, Chloe the dog came and began licking up the milk.

Now, Chloe was at death's door this week (I actually think that when she got part of the chicken on Monday evening, she crunched a bone that embedded itself and then, a few days later, worked itself free, but I certainly didn't do an operation to confirm that). I am happy that she is still alive and walking.

But to drink the milk I labored to acquire, cold and tired! I made the mistake. I set it down where she could easily access it, unaware that she was even outside.

Or take my glasses. No matter how often I go for an eye appointment, within a few months, my glasses give me a headache. (The eye doctor says it's because of constantly changing hormones: pregnancy, delivery, exclusive breastfeeding, non-exclusive breastfeeding.) So I wear my glasses in the car, and I usually set them there in a secure place. But this week, the secure place was not secure enough, and the lens popped out and the frame bent.

Not the end of the world. But still: three cases of Amy failure in one week feels like too much for this recovering perfectionist.

In light of that, how good to go to church and be reminded of Christ's preeminence, and to go to Bible study and be reminded of the need to "gird up the loins of the mind." To take a belt around my thoughts and squeeze in those that are good and right and keep out the bad and wrong.

In farm news: despite taking off Monday to can, and Wednesday to clean the house (it had been much too long since the carpet was clear enough to vacuum) and finish processing green tomatoes, I managed to work within 15 minutes of my standard amount of hours, and the boys and I finished a full week's worth of school. Very productive.

Since Phil is working on a major engineering project, we haven't done much around the farm the last couple of days.

We did, though, notice a spider pair that's hanging out in our house. We assume the larger abdomen is on the female, but whether she is wife or mother, we can't say.

The Seeder, Up Close

We rejoice that the seeding finished yesterday: by 10pm, rain started to fall. At this point, we've had an inch of mostly gentle rain, and nice weather in the 50s. Great growing weather!

Today Phil went with Richard, the pig and market garden farmer, while Richard delivered to about ten restaurants and small local grocery stores. At the end of the day, Phil said that we would like to buy Richard's farm; however, due to immigration issues with the current manager, we'll wait for about a month, to see whether that will happen.

It's a good decision, and it gives me great joy: if we are supposed to take over (and have a steady income! and be real farmers instead of hobby farmers!), it will happen; otherwise, God will close the door.

For now, we wait, and accomplish what we can where we're planted.

And now, some photos from the great seeding endeavor.

Phil drives the tractor we're buying over to our property for the first time. Looking good!

Isaiah and Joe, ever curious about the ways of the farm, climb and explore the enormous seeding machine.

A brief explanation of how this machine works: the three wheels, in a classic tricycle format, support the machine (I was impressed to see the front wheel rotate a complete 360; very efficient). The smaller wheel near the front, Isaiah pointed out, connects to the mechanism that releases seed. When that wheel turns, the seed drops down from the hopper, and the vertical plates cut grooves in the soil for the seeds to fall into. Below, you can see the wheels all down, ready to seed.

When the seed shouldn't drop on the ground (say, when on the driveway), the seeder raises the seeder wheel and discs up.

Below, a photo to show the difference between ripped soil (right), and seeded soil (center and left). The grooves are different, and the seeder does not go nearly as deep.

As I mentioned, Phil rode on the seeder all day. He watched to make sure the discs didn't get clogged (as they did sometimes), and to check the seed levels. It sounds like a fairly mind-numbing occupation, and physically exhausting (not to mention DUSTY!).

And finally, a not-terribly-gruesome photo of Joe's finger. This is the cut side; the other side looks almost normal, and you can see that the tip is pink (though grubby). A hurt finger hasn't slowed him down at all. He still delights in jumping from the bunkbed onto the mattress on the floor below, among other dangerous, thrilling ventures.

Canning and Seeding

Monday morning I left to visit my friend Melanie and learn how to can. I had more than two 5-gallon buckets of green tomatoes, and stopped by Whole Foods on my way, to buy red peppers and onions, cilantro and jalapenos.

We spent almost six hours chopping, talking, boiling, and canning.

And we had several mishaps. For the first time ever, in many years of canning experience, she had a jar break while canning. The second batch of relish we made didn't fit in the pot nearly as well as the first batch. I realized, very belatedly, that I had used twice as many tomatoes as I should have! (Well, at least that's what I wanted to get rid of!)

In a brilliant move that proves that marketing is everything, we scorched the second batch, and the whole thing tasted, well, smokey. My first taste made me think it might be a total loss. Melanie tasted it and said, "Ah, a bit of smokey flavor, maybe a roasted pepper?" And then it didn't taste like "ruined food" but more like "upscale enchilada sauce." I like it.

I got home about an hour after I usually milk, and ran for the milking supplies. When I reached the dry lot, Bianca stood in the headgate, ready to be milked. Good girl!

Then I ate dinner, read to the boys, and went to bed with them at 9:30pm. I decided there had been too many days in a row that I had hated the 7:30am up-to-milk summons, and I needed to not be quite so exhausted. Ten hours of sleep did the trick.

Phil worked with the boys picking rocks out of the neighbor's field. When I saw the bed of the truck full of grapefruit-sized rocks and larger, what a job they did. (And Phil and I had to toss them all out, by ones and twos. In the future, we'll plan to put rocks in the bucket of the tractor, and then dump them as needed.)

Phil woke Tuesday feeling very sick. It would probably be prudent for us all to take an Airborne before (and after?) church, especially if any of us are in the nursery helping (as Phil did, a bit, on Sunday). He lay, huddled, under blankets, dozing.

But life on the farm doesn't stop because a person is sick. We had scheduled a seeder for delivery, and so it came. We probably got a machine a bit too high-tech for the job (since we ripped and disced, a regular seeder would have worked, but we got the more complex "no till drill"). The delivery guy, and his manager at the shop, couldn't tell us quite how to set the machine, but we have it, for two days.

Tuesday afternoon, Butch called to say that he wasn't going to be able to help us after all on Wednesday. Phil groaned, and dragged himself around. He got the seeder hooked up to the tractor, and started driving it around the orchard, to get a feel for how it works. He had done about half the apple orchard when we looked in the hopper. Almost all the clover seed we had put in for two acres was gone, but almost none of the ryegrass seed was gone. Odd.

This morning, Phil went to try seeding the cherry orchard, and soon got stuck. I tried to help pull him, the seeder, and the tractor out. It worked a lot better once I took the parking break off. (Ahem.)

Phil said that he would really prefer to wait to seed until Butch was available with his tractor. I cringed: we have decent weather (rain was forecasted for last night and today, but none fell); we have the seeder; we're rapidly passing the proper seeding time. So Phil headed next door.

He quickly realized that none of the rye seed had been sown last night. The residual seeds in the hopper had clogged the machine. Once he opened the setting very wide, and the random seeds (hopefully none genetically modified!) fell out, the seeder worked well.

And then, wonder of wonders, Butch showed up, riding his white steed, er, orange tractor! His job was cancelled for the day, so he drove up and down for almost eight hours, I'd guess, with Phil riding on the back of the seeder.

This has been a major undertaking, but the land next door is now ready for winter, ready for rains, ready for growth and newness. Very good.

For myself, I saved the goats today. I was cooking in the barn-kitchen when I heard a not-quite-human scream. We had been storing not-in-use electric netting in the field where the bucks hang out. They've been in that field for, oh, three weeks or so, and suddenly today they must have had the urge to get caught in the netting.

I found them, head to head, with lines of electric net under their chins and around their throats, twenty lines of netting around each of four horns. I almost despaired of getting them free, they had worked the netting so tightly.