Land Flowing With Milk and Honey

The lights are burning in the barn.  LuLu has been in milk for 14 months now.  We've finally weaned her bull calf, Nick, and he's in the back pasture that we call "the bull pen."  As the cows go into heat, we run them into the bull pen to be with Nick until after they've finished with standing heat.  Our goal is to get Rosie and LuLu bred and the big heifer, Elsie, bred for the first time.  

We're milking LuLu in the morning and at night.  She's not making a whole lot of milk, but we're trying to keep her cleaned out so that she doesn't get mastitis.  LuLu has been a pretty good milker.  Since Nick was weaned, she's making SO much cream.  Sometimes almost half of the bucket is heavy cream!

Here is our inventory in the fridge of LuLu milk.  It's all dated and we use the First in, First out method to make sure it doesn't go bad.  We get real creative with different things to do with milk when we have a good supply like this.

Cream rises to the top, so you can see what I mean about the rich Jersey milk from LuLu.  We skim the cream off the top and shake up the rest.  So delicious!

Lately, we've been making lots of butter and stockpiling it.  Butter freezes nicely, so we're building up stores of butter in the freezer.

We also have more fresh-churned butter in the fridge ready to slather on piping hot sourdough bread.

At some point here pretty soon, we'll dry off LuLu and that means we'll have a break from milking until the cows calve and freshen.  We're still milking Agnes, the goat.  Tricia plans on freezing some of her milk to make some goat milk soap.  We talked about milk tonight.  I've a story to tell you about honey, but I'll save that for another night.

Milk Production Has Fallen Off

Back in the spring, we were milking Rosie, Clarabelle and Luna and the fridge was stocked with fresh milk.  The grass in the pasture was green and tender, resulting in milk with a big head of cream on top.

Now we find ourselves knocking on the door of November.  The first front has blown in, bringing with it chilly mornings and the first leaves are starting to fall from the trees.  The grass is about to go dormant and lots of it has gone to seed.  Yes, the seasons are changing. And it is also time to change up our routine.

In exactly eight days, we'll stop milking Rosie.  Rosie is pregnant and will be calving in early January.  We always stop milking the cows two months prior to their calving date to give them time to "rest up." That gives them time to shift their energies from producing milk to nourishing the growing calf within them.

Milk production is all about supply and demand.  Since she is only making about a gallon of milk per day, we can stop milking cold turkey and not have to worry about having problems.  We'll simply stop milking her, cut down on her feed a little and she'll dry up.  She'll freshen (milk production begins) in January when she calves.  At that point we'll have to milk her again, but for the next couple months, we'll enjoy the break.

Buying Milk From The Store

I asked the waiter, 'Is this milk fresh?' He said, 'Lady, three hours ago it was grass.' Phyllis Diller

That is some fresh milk!  Unfortunately, for the first time in almost two years, we have NO fresh milk.  When Tricia got sick, we dried up both cows (Daisy & Rosie) and the goat (Annie).  There is no milk on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  In fact, we made a trip to the grocery store and picked up a carton of this stuff:

It's kind of a strange product.  Store-bought milk seems so thin and different tasting.  It is not as rich and creamy as milk straight from the cow.  The last time we dried up the cows, we didn't buy much milk at all.  We just bought heavy whipping cream to pour in our coffee.

We are certainly enjoying our break from not having to milk cows and a goat every day! One could certainly get used to this!  We need a milk maid.  That's what we need!  For ten years now we've hand-milked our cows.  Tricia surprised me the other day when we were sitting on the swing when she said, "Maybe when the cows freshen, we should look into purchasing an electric milking machine?"

In This Post from May we talked about how we had the cows palpated.  At that time, we confirmed that Rosie and Clarabelle were bred.  In fact, they have all been exposed to the bull and should be bred now, but we haven't tested Daisy and Luna. Rosie will calve in early September and Clarabelle in October.  If you look at ol' Rosie, you can see her girth is expanding.  Yep, she is "with calf."

We have about a month and a half break before we have calves on the ground and that means that we'll be milking again.  It is certainly a lot of work (unless we acquire the services of a milk maid and/or a milking machine!), but the benefits of REAL, FRESH, Milk are well worth the toil.  Until then, our milk will be "imported" in cartons instead of buckets.  We'll keep you posted as calving dates approach.