My lovely cows

    I drag myself out of bed at 6am to milk, again, as I have for the past 400 plus days since I started milking.  It's completely worth it, except when I don't feel like it, and then it still is!  My cows decided this morning to make me come get them, instead of coming up to the gate, so now my feet are wet from the dew.  Sweet lovely cows...

Meet Sage, this is her 2nd lactation, Cherry is her calf from this year.  She's a pretty sweet cow, for the most part, well, for a cow.  She still kicks occasionally, and hits me in the face with her tail, but I guess that's just what cows do.

And here's CBC, wanna know what her name means?  Ha!  It stands for Crazy B*itch Cow, and she's earned it.  Thankfully she's settled down a lot in the last two years but when I started milking her she kicked me over and over and over again, I had to tie her to the wall to get milking done.  And that was when I hand milked so it meant she'd kick the bucket over numerous times as well.  Oh well, now she's almost my favorite cow, she definitely the best milker, she gives more milk and more cream than Sage, and she milks out twice as fast.  She rarely kicks me anymore, thankfully, though when she does she kicks hard and fast.  I love my milking stand, it protects me from getting kicked, before my husband and I built it I would have to jump when I felt them twitch, now I just laugh, "ha ha, you can't get me".

And then I get to carry the heavy tank, full of 5+ gallons of milk, into the house, sometimes it weighs as much as #60, no fun at all.  I do love having the milker, before hand it was so hard to keep the milk clean, an open bucket underneath a cow is just a bad thing, they aren't the cleanest animal's in the world, and don't even get me started about the flies.  Now I end up with pristine milk every time, and no carpel tunnel from hand milking, it's a win win situation!  I do strain the milk into the jars, just in case, I like to be doubly sure it's perfectly clean, and then I stick it into my freezer, which is dialed down as low as possible.  The thermometer this morning said -6 F, which is great as to have Grade A milk in a commercial dairy you need to be able to cool the milk to 40 degrees F in 2 hours.  I usually can accomplish that, or get very close, which helps the milk stay fresh longer. 

They gave 5 gallons this morning, that's about average, sometimes it's up around 6, depending on how lush the section of pasture is that they're on.  It hasn't rained in a couple weeks, so the pasture is suffering.  I'm trying to go 100% grass-fed, the cows get a handful of grain at milking, only because they wouldn't put their head in the stanchion if I didn't give them some.  Once I run out of grain, which is taking a while at a handful at a time, I'm going to use alfalfa pellets, then they'll be 100%, which is awesome, better milk quality, healthier cows.  Cows aren't designed to eat grain, they have four stomachs for a reason, to digest grass, eating grain messes up the pH in their rumen, and messes up their digestion.  Obviously a handful isn't going to affect much of anything, but think about cattle in feedlots, they are fed so much grain that they have to be butchered around 15 months of age, or they will die of liver failure.  Twenty five percent of feedlot cattle have liver abscesses, but what's great, according to the Beef Council, is that only severe abscesses affect cattle performance, and only about 6.5% have severe abscesses.  So no big deal that 25% of the beef in the store is from a sick animal, as long as it continues to grow quickly and produce as much meat as possible in the shortest period of time, it's perfectly ok!   Vote with your food dollars, that's the only way change will happen.  If you are looking for a good source for grass-fed small farm raised beef, contact me and I'll give you the info for a friend of mine who butchers and sells wonderful meat.

Okay, so I kind of got off on a tangent there, sorry about that :)

So next on the list of things I need to do today is to make another batch of Mozzarella, I bought some more citric acid yesterday, it's in the canning section at the grocery store, if your needing any.  To save on jar washing, I strained last night's milk right into my three gallon pot and stuck the whole thing in the frig, as I knew I was going to make some sort of cheese today.

And it turned out GREAT!!!  The last 3-4 times I made Mozzarella it just didn't turn out right, it would end up being hard and dry and rubbery.  This turned out super soft and stretchy and delicious!  I taste tested it several times :)  Yum, now I just wish I had fresh tomatoes in my garden to eat it with...  It won't be long.