Finally Got A New Milking Pail

I think my math is correct.  This June it will be 12 years since we've been hand-milking cows.  We've always milked into a couple of blue speckled enamelware gumbo pots.  Over the years the pots have gotten kicked by cows and dropped by us.  Some of these drops involved full buckets of milk, and we learned the old saying, "You can't cry over spilled milk" all too well.  The buckets have dings and dents that you would expect to happen with things that get used.  Unfortunately, the enamel coating on the bottom of the pots has worn off and after washing the pots, you can see a small bit of rust on the exposed surface of the pot.

Luna's milking bucket

Tricia started looking in a Jeffer's Livestock Supplies catalog and found some stainless steel pails with handles.  She ordered the 13 quart pail just to try it out.  It came in and we wrapped a muslin rag around the top and headed out to the barn to try out our new purchase. 

Luna looked at the new pail suspiciously

The nifty thing about it is the handle.  We quickly noticed that the handle is a great benefit.  With the enameled milking bucket, you must carry it with two hands by the handles on either side.  The handle on the stainless steel bucket allows you to carry it with one hand, leaving the other hand free to carry other items.

The stainless steel pot seems much easier to clean after pouring the milk out.  The only downside to this pail is that it did not come with a lid.  Although we use a rag tied around the top as a filter of sorts, it would be nice if it would have come with a top.

After using this one in a trial, we really like it and will likely purchase another one for Rosie's milking pail.

Don't Go Swimming For at Least 30 Minutes After Eating

Don't go swimming for at least 30 minutes after eating or you could get stomach cramps and drown! That is something that I used to hear all the time as a kid.  We didn't have the Internet in the 70's and 80's.  If we did, we could have googled it and learned as I just did from this article that that little piece of advice was a myth and that they can't find one documented death caused by swimming after eating. Just think of all the extra time we could have enjoyed swimming as kids in the summer if we had known better.

Well, for the past week I have found documented evidence that the "myth" that says that we shouldn't swim for 30 minutes after we eat may not be a myth after-all.  In fact I have documented proof of an experiment done using lab rats (okay, maybe they aren't lab rats) in the photo below.  This settled science has not been peer-reviewed, but the picture below is hard to refute.

This rat needed a life preserver

We showed you back in this post from June how we ferment rice to be used for chicken feed.  Each morning and night we soak rice in buckets of water.  Rats from the barn smell the fermenting grain, jump into the buckets of water to eat and then drown.  Over the past few days, I have extracted a total of four drowned rats from the rice bucket once I drain the water out.

Each morning, I toss the water-logged and very dead rats out in the barnyard to the omnivorous chickens who make a quick meal of the drowned rats marinated overnight in fermented rice 'wine'. Tasty!  Why, the fermenting rice bucket has turned into a veritable buffet line of grains and meats for the chickens! Remember kids, swimming and eating don't mix!  (For rats, at least.)