Last Potatoes

Christina is nine years old today. We'll help her celebrate by milking her at the time she's used to, and feeding her the food she's used to.  Cows do like predictability.  Although we do plan to give her a few more turnips because she loves those.

My friend who came over to teach us to make fudge recommends that we do it often so that the memory takes firm hold.  The kids think that is a great idea.  My nine-year-old daughter and I whipped out this batch.  It wasn't obvious to me when to pour, so we stirred until our arms couldn't stand it any more and just poured.  It squished out a little thinner than we would have liked, but it hardened up quickly and was fantastic.  We didn't even bother putting it on a plate, we just ate it off the counter.

I made a monterey jack cheese yesterday and it didn't knit together.  I tried cutting the curds in a different way and I think they got too small.  As I was loading the curds into the mold, my daughter grabbed some and said we should just eat it that way.  Since the pressing didn't work out, we sliced it up fresh and ate it straight.

With a little sun shining we were hungry for hamburgers and french fries.  We dug out the last of the potatoes from the cellar, and it's only January.  We need to grow a lot more next year.  Thank God we can buy more at the store. 

Some potatoes have started to soften.  We grew three varieties, all close together, and they got harvested together.  Next year we'll plant them in separate spots so they are easy to keep separate.  Some varieties keep a lot better than others.

As we fight the mice in the house, we've ignored the mice in the cow shed.  This morning a mouse was in Christina's feeder when we milked. The mouse ran underneath it but was squashed when Christina moved the feeder around.  Christina is a mighty mouse hunter!  We threw the little dead body to the chickens.  The fastest of them grabbed it and ran.