Cheese Making Day 1

Well technically its day two. Yesterday I cultured the buttermilk. They say you can use buttermilk from the store to make cheese but its not as good. So I bought a little packet of powdered buttermilk culture to make my own from scratch. That process involves heating pasturized milk to 80 degrees, stirring in the packet, putting it in a thermos to keep the temp at about 80 and letting it sit on the counter for 24 hours. 80 degrees is apparently the best temp for growing bacteria. I never realized what cheese really is until I made it for the first time. Letting milk sit on the counter overnight and get all thick and chunky goes against everything I know. But that's what cheese is, bacteria. But its the right kinds of good bacteria, a chunky glass of expired milk is not on its way to becoming cheese! After 24 hours the cultured buttermilk goes into a labeled mason jar in the fridge. The nice thing about most of these cultures is that you don't have to create the whole process from scratch every time you run out of buttermilk. You just take one part buttermilk and add 4 parts whole milk. Give it some time and the bacteria repopulate the whole jar into buttermilk again.

So today I had to pasturize 5 quarts of milk since I hadn't done that yet. I cooled it to 80 degrees, added 1/3 cup buttermilk, 2 Tbs diluted rennet and now it sits on the counter for 8-12 hours. I really didn't plan this well because now I will have to get up at 6am and start draining it in the cheesecloth before I go to work. Luckily that's an easy process too. I'm still a newbie at this cheesemaking but it doesn't seem that hard. You do a few little things one day, let it sit for a while, do a few little things the next day then let it sit. Its a slow process but not all that hard. Other cheeses are more difficult so I may have something different to say when I start trying those. I'm anxious to try cheddar. I'm still waiting for Mike to make me a cheese press. Its much cheaper than buying one and it really is a pretty simple contraption. I'm also waiting for him to build me a milk stand and a chicken coop. The honey-do list is getting long.

Yesterday I planted my tomato seeds in little pots. I've never grown tomatos from seeds so this is new also. I usually just get the plants from the greenhouse and put them right into the garden. I'm also trying to grow sweet potato slips this year. That's not going so well. I bought a sweet potato at the grocery store and put in a glass jar half full of water and suspended with toothpicks. Its been sitting in the sun for about 2 weeks now and nothing is happening. I don't think this is going to work out. Last time I ordered sweet potato slips from a catalog and they arrived in the middle of June and practically dead. I planted them and they basically did nothing for a while then started grow late August, way too late in the summer for them to produce anything. I think I may just give up on sweet potatos.

Now I'm off to make some fresh buttermilk biscuits!

HunnyBunny Udder Wipes

My adventures in milking continue. Its taking a lot of practice and patience to get back into this goat milking thing. For both me and the goats! Typically Hunny is easier to milk because her udder is larger and fits my hand easier, plus the milk comes out faster so I can get the job done before she runs out of patience with me. Bunny is younger and her udder is not as large. Her milk comes out slower and its harder for me to get a grip on. Today I could have had more milk from her but she was done with me so I let her go back to her babies. We did better than yesterday so that's progress. The last two days I have separated them from their kids for about 5 hours and I've been getting about 1/2 gallon of milk total. Its enough for now. I used to bring soapy water and wash their udder before milking but this week I made "HunnyBunny Wipes". Based on a recipe for homemade baby wipes I created a special blend for my girls. I cut a roll of paper towels in half, took out the cardboard roll and put it in the perfect size container. Then I added a mixture of water, peppermint oil (for circulation & milk letdown), tea tree oil (antibacterial) and vitamin E (skin conditioning). This is working really well and so much easier than a hauling around a bucket of soapy water. Plus they always smell minty fresh! They also make great hand wipes for me to use.

Here are pictures of Hunny and Bunny the day they had their kids. They are crossbred to our 100% Boer Billy so I call the kids "Toggenboers":)

A Brand New Blog

Instead of adding stories and text to our website logging all our new adventures I decided to just add a blog. You'll have to see our website for previous postings but here's a quick summary.

Chickens: Last fall we ordered some chicks in the mail. We've never had laying hens before so this is a new adventure. We have Rhode Island Reds, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Barred Rocks and White Rocks. We ordered from McMurray Hatchery and they give you the option of a free chick. Our free chick turned out to be an Americana rooster. Perfect, we needed a rooster. We named him Glenn Peck. Yep, that's right named after the man himself, Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck is crowing the warning for our country's freedom and Glenn Peck...well he's just making a lot of noise :) The hens started laying in mid-January when they were just over 4 months old. Now we are getting almost an egg per day from each one and the eggs are almost full size. This spring I couldn't resist those cute little chicks and ordered a few more. We now have 3 Buff Orpington chicks and 7 Americana chicks. For those that don't know Americanas lay the tinted eggs and are referred to as Easter Egg Layers. I'm expecting some colorful eggs by August.

Goats: We have been raising Boer goats for several years. Last summer we got two dairy goats, Toggenburgs named Hunny and Bunny. We got them because I have been becoming more and more interested in living a simpler life in which we provide ourselves with as much of our own home grown food as possible. A milk cow seemed like it required an awful lot of work and money. After researching dairy goats I found that goat milk has a lot of nutritional benefits over cow milk. When we brought Hunny and Bunny home they were starting to dry up and produce less milk. I still got enough to try out some recipes like ice cream, cheese, pudding, soap and lotion. Now they have had their kids and I'm back to milking them. Most people bottle feed the kids but I'm leaving the kids on them. Its made it more difficult so far but I'm gradually getting more milk. It seems the goats would rather give the milk to their babies than me and often won't let much down for me. The kids are a couple weeks old now so I just started separating them for a few hours before milking. I told Hunny and Bunny that I "kid"napped their babies and was holding them for ransome to be paid in milk. I get much more milk this way and plan on making my second ever batch of cheese this week. I'll start with a soft cream cheese since Mike still has to build me a cheese press.

Sheep: I don't have a lot to write about the sheep. We are pretty much done lambing for this year. We had a good year and hopefully they will all stay healthy. We cross our romanov/ramboiullet ewes with our black dorper ram and get what I call our "holstein" sheep. They sure are cute!

Calves: A couple times a year we'll get a batch of holstein bottle calves from a nearby dairy. They are a lot of work and I'm always glad when we wean them after 6 weeks of twice per day feedings. They are cute and sweet though, you can't help but fall in love with them.

You'll also see on our website that we have miniature horses. These are actually my mom's horses so I won't have much to say about them. They have their own stories titled "Pony Tales: The Adventures of Junebug & Jitterbug". Books are coming soon to our website.