Milk. It does a body good (and a winner) July 7, 2008
At this point I am pasteurizing the milk with the low and long heat method. 145 degrees for 30 minutes, then 24 hours in the fridge for the cream to fully rise. I then scoop the cream to a separate container and pour the milk into bottles, unless their is more than 5 (1/2 gallon bottles) in the fridge already, then I freeze the milk instead. Although milk can last 7 - 10 days in the fridge it hasn’t stuck around more than 2. We will most likely stop pasteurizing soon, but with the cows being new to our farm, a one year old, a 3 year old and me being pregnant Aba and I felt we should be on the extra cautious side.
Milking is still a 2 person job we have to continually switch off to give our hands a break, and it takes us 40 minutes and an hour depending on how much milk we are getting, how patient Belle is, and how tired our hands are from farm chores. I am frankly amazed at how the old lady we bought her from milked out 3 quarts in under 15 minutes ( but then she was raised on a dairy farm milking ashieres, so…). Aba’s hands are killing him from the milking, at times it is difficult opening and closing his hands, but we just can’t justify the expense for a milking machine at this time (even though it would help a lot), and so Shasta has yet to be milked. We just don’t have an extra 2 hours to put into milking her; but her calf is keeping her supply up for now, so until she weans him we will at least have the option of milking her.
Belles milk is super yummy, we have been getting 1 1/2 to 2 quarts per milking for the past 2 weeks now and out of that we have enough cream to make 3 cups of butter and 2 cups of buttermilk. the old owner was getting 3 quarts of milk per milking, and while we have managed to duplicate that we are happy with the amount we are getting. We have plenty for milk at every meal, butter, buttermilk, milk for cooking and then some. We even tried to make a batch of ice cream. It all tastes really well, I was a bit surprised when I saw the cream for the first time ( I thought I did something wrong) because it was so think! Almost like whipped cream cheese.
Oh and the winner of the Fairy Foals book is Jinman28! Please email me with your address so I can get that out to you!






