…or have been, incessantly…

[aside and preamble - there is alot of dairy talk in this here post, so vegans and those of a lactose-intolerant persuasion might wish to skip those bits. I’ve been thinking how much happier i am to ingest a raw, unpasteurised wholefood than to drink soy or rice milks. The extraction and processing of these products creates a food which is not natural or whole. anyway, just a thought, which is not relevant for those who are ethical vegans or those who have a system which can’t digest milk…]

…today, happily, we see some sun, and maybe some tomatos will ripen and our perpetually soggy little calf will dry out a bit and her rain scalded little hoofs and legs will regrow the fur they’ve lost and i will get some vitamin D and my disposition will change from glowering to glowing and the chooks will lay and the worms that usually live outside under the soil but have made the big trek indoors in their hundreds will go back to their earthly home and so on.

I feel somewhat guilty bagging out the rain, since i know come too many sunny days in a row and i will be worrying about when the next rains will come… but ordinary day to day tasks become very difficult when the sog reaches a certain level and the water table is no longer below the surface of the earth…

So, be that as it may, rains and so on, things carry on and there are goings on to report, and some pics to illustrate said goings on.

We have a new housecow, and her name is Rosie. She is a beautiful jersey, about 6 years old, and she’s pregnant with her 4th calf. She comes to us via the generosity of Brian, Charlene’s boss. He’s a cool guy. Brian’s wife is named Rosie, and we could think of no better name for this much loved newest addition to our small herd.

rosie

Rosie has a very very placid disposition and from day one let us squat down at very close quarters around her back legs while we did things to her udder… It feels slightly precarious to be in such close proximity to a potentially swift kick with a hind hoof. I’ve seen the damage that can cause and a hoof in the face would not be pretty… but she’s a darling and honestly I really feel perfectly safe around her.  She’s due to be dried off in about 3 weeks before the birth (she’s due 15th July)and towards the end of her lactation her milk will become very creamy (and it is!).

pretty face

We are currently milking anywhere between 4 - 6 litres from her in the mornings. We have alot of milk product in the fridge!

 
the first milking - about 6 litres…

our fridge… full of milk and cream…

cream begins at the arrow…

separating the cream from the milk

Dried off heifers who are in the last trimester of their pregnancy are called "springers", and take a different diet to help build up their strength for the birth and for suckling their newborns, which takes alot out of the cow. After the birth Rosie will produce up to 15 - 20 litres of milk. Her newborn calf will drink about a litre and a half. Hopefully our little Luka will drink from her as well (we are currently feeding her Rosie’s milk via bottle or bucket). That will leave us a good 12 or so litres to strip out of her by hand! That is muscle building work! Brian suggested we take up squeezing stress balls to strengthen our hands for the ordeal…

With so much milk product I’ve been looking into making other dairy foods - butter, yoghurt, cheese…  I have no equipment to speak of, so I’m doing alot by hand and in a fairly ad hoc way, but the butter seemed to work just fine, we’ve had it spread on our toast and it doesn’t have a strong or sweet taste, but it’s soooooooooo good… i just have to experiment a bit more…

our butter

To make the butter I used about 500ml of cream (you can use as much as you have or want) and this made about 100 grams of butter.  

I used a bowl and a hand whisk (wooden utensils soaked in water are preferable, cos the butter won’t stick to them), but you can use a blender or food processor.

Whip the cream in the bowl until it passes through the whipped cream stage and then quite suddenly you will hear a sloshing in the bowl as the butter and buttermilk separate. Drain off the buttermilk into a jug (use it for drinking or baking).

The next stage is called "washing" the butter and is the process by which all the buttermilk is expressed from the butter. Marja Fitzgerald says that she washes the butter only once, and that by leaving some buttermilk in the butter the butter will stay sweet for about 5 days and then develop a "cultured flavour". I washed the butter many times, using a wooden spoon to pat and squeeze the butter until the water runs clear (my mum used to use "scotch hands" for this process). Then I drained off the last of the water and continued to pat and squeeze intil no more buttermilk came out. It comes out through the buttter in small beads and runs off. It takes some time, and i was pretty thorough, but i’m sure there was a little buttermilk left.

Further advice indicates that it is probably best not to use fresh cream (milked that day) for butter making. Best to use cream that is about 5 days ol. The taste will be sweeter, not so tasleless. If you use cream that has been naturally soured at room temperature just slightly, then you will have a culktured butter. 

Today I am going to experiment with yoghurt. It seems like a complex process with incubators and double boilers and so on, but i am taking Marja’s advice and keeping it simple. I’ll put a spoonful of storebought, unflavoured yoghurt (jalna) in a jar and pour just milked (and therefore very warm) milk into the jar. I’ll place it somewhere reasonably warm, wrapped in a wooly jumper and leave it for 24 hours, see what happens! I think Marja was probably living in the kind of farmhouse where there was an aga or other wood burning stove going all the time (as it was during my childhood), making the kitchen a very warm place. I have a fucking awesomely fantastic Ilve stove, but when it’s not on it’s just stone cold, and doesn’t do anything to keep the kitchen warm. Perhaps when the weather turns more wintry and we are having fires at night i can place the jars around the fire to do their thing. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes…

Enough with the dairy!

(phew! as i write this I feel the list of tasks that cover the concept "self sufficency" stretch out before me in a neverending scroll towards the vanishing point of the horizon… the produce to be dealt with by baking, preserving or eating before it is spoiled - limes by the score, bananas by the many hands, milk milk milk; the lawns to be mowed before the water table turns everything to sog again; the vegies to be tended and garden beds to be mulched, the animals to be cared for, and that’s just today… )

So Tashi has a new house. Goats do not like the rain. The only place Tashi had to go to be out of the rain was the verandah, and i’m all about keeping animal housing and human housing quite seperate… the old pighouse would have been ideal, but the other thing about tashi is her deep need to be near humans. she likes to be able to see us, be near us, and the pig house was too far away, she just would not stay. Even tethering her was useless. she just got herself into a terrible mess trying to get closer to us. So a house for Tashi was in order. Tashi has a good sprinkling of mountain in her, likes to climb, be at the highest point, so we decided on an A frame up off the ground that she could climb up to, be safe from the weather and be near us. Our man in Dunoon, John, made the house for us. Here it is. We need to spruce it up a bit, probably with a sign and some carnival lights, but she seems to like it…

tashi’s new house 

peeking out…

My dairygrrl is going well out at the farm. Apparently she’s onto the "second stage of learning", which is all about the cows and calves. Brian has been reading this blog, and laughed when I said they milked 400 cows a day. Actually the herd is 400 strong but of that 400 there are always cows who are not being milked because they are in the process of drying off and so on prior to calving. So often these mornings Charlene spends mornings wandering in the paddocks searching for the calves that have been born overnight. They are very small and hide in the grass, and play dead when you pick them up. She identifies them and then records every little detail about them before rosie comes to take them to their new home. In the calf pens they get warm milk delivered straight from their mums morning and night. They are kept in the pen to keep them warm, dry and safe from harm. This way they can be monitored for disease and given extra attention if they are struggling. She still comes home smiling every night, with that special aroma of cow in her clothes and hair.

One of our loved family members has hit the road, and we are sad to see her go. Our much loved farmboy Zhane has turned swaggie boy and is movin’ … Big adventures await her but she knows she always has a home here. I’ll miss her quiet presence in the garden, or feeding the animals, or smokin’ on the balcony while looking out towards the horizon. She’s been such a fantastic help on this sustainability journey we’re on, and we hope she comes back full of the world, full of the roads she’s travelled, full of color and joy.

Zhane … thinking of nuffin …

Zboy

So we have a new tenant, whose name is Bec. She’s a massage therapist, a naturopath and all things good, and we’re looking forward to the new energy she will bring to the farm.

I’ve been told I should wrap this up, it’s getting way out of hand, so wrap I will.

It’s been too long between visits, so I’l endeavout to wander out into the backyard a little more frequently.

Much love to farmfans everywhere.

 Vxx