The Sadest Words: No Milk

It's over.  Christina had dried herself off.

Her milk and been dropping and dropping.  We were making do and hoping it would level off, but then one evening we went out to milk and there was nothing there.  Well, there was a little bit there, but after a while of milking and only two cups of milk to show for it, we knew it was over.  Christina was dry.

For the first time in almost two and a half years, we have no Christina milk.  The last two times she dried off, we were prepared with milk and cream waiting in the freezer.  This time we hadn't prepared because we hoped she wouldn't dry off.  We were wrong.

After growing used to drinking two gallons of milk a day, we have to suddenly learn to live with a whole lot less milk.  In less than two months Sunflower is due to calf and we'll be in milk again, but in the meantime we have to buy milk.  And it won't be that nasty commercial milk either!  We'll drink raw jersey milk or we'll skip it.  Luckily we can buy raw jersey milk in town, but it costs an awful lot.  Ugh.

The silver lining is that we get the rest of a dry period.  The first evening of not milking, we watched a movie right after dinner, because we could!  We'll have to do more of that.

Lard Honor

When jerky went to the butcher, we had the presence of mind to ask for the fat.  Normally they throw the fat away, but we had read about rendering lard and figured it wouldn't be that hard.  I've read that lard from grass-fed beef isn't nearly as bad for you as "regular" lard.

When we arrived to pick up our meat, we got six boxes of meat and two full boxes of fat.  Some people render lard on the stove top, but you have to be careful not to burn it.  My solution was to use the oven.  I filled my two big pots as full as I could get them and set the oven to 325ºF.  About eight hours later, we found much reduced kettles with lots of amber liquid.

We poured the liquid through a cheese cloth, using our big milk funnel, into gallon jars.  It didn't take long for the liquid to cool to solid.

It took three batches and three days to render all that fat.   In the end we got seven gallons of lard which we'll store in the frig or cellar so it won't go rancid. 

I've heard that lard is best for pie crusts, so we promptly tried it out.  Sure enough, it was very good pie crust and much easier to work with than butter.  We've already had apple pie and chicken pie.  With seven gallons of lard, we can have pie most every day!

It was some effort rendering all that lard, but not that bad.  It feels really good to make better use of jerky's sacrifice on our behalf.  Now his meat *and* his fat is nourishing our family.

Stinking Frost

The frost is coming at the normal time this year, but it feels way too early and I'm not happy about it.  It's not that I mind the cold mornings, although I do.  It's not that I mind wearing a jacket in the middle of the day, although I do.  It's not even that I mind having to light a fire in the morning; I love that!

The problem with frost is that it makes work for us!  The peppers were hit lightly by frost last night and they can't take another one.  We either let them die or we save them to ripen under cover.  We opted for the latter.  After pulling the whole plants, we hung them in the garage to let the peppers redden up. These will become our chili powder for the year.

My husband and several of my children love hot peppers.  The jalapenos don't have to ripen, so we just emptied off the plants.  This basket full of peppers was off only six plants, and that's after a sizable harvest already. You don't need many jalapeno plants to get a lot of jalapenos.

You Had to Know It Would Happen

Last year at this time, Christina was dried off, awaiting the birth of her calf.  This year we are still working on getting her pregnant. 

Last month her milk production suddenly started to drop.  She was giving about 4.2 gallons per day.  In three weeks that dropped to 3.0 gallons a day.  It was scarey when it was dropping so fast, but it does seem to have leveled off now.   One blessing is that as her production has gone down, the cream content has gone up.  This gallon from a few days ago is almost half cream!!  That's half-and-half on tap.

We've bred Christina six times since last January and we're still working on getting her pregnant.  The dairy we bought her from said that some of their older cows get to where AI (artificial insemination) doesn't work, but a bull will get the job done.  The problem is that full grown bulls are extremely dangerous animals.  They had a solution — a young bull.  This guy is only 10 months old, old enough to get the job done, but young enough not to be aggressive.  We are borrowing him for a while until Christina gets pregnant. 

He's young and small, so we're not sure he can reach, but we are confident he'll be motivated.  We may actually have to help by holding Christina down in the ditch so he can reach better.  We've been laughing about it all day.  My husband said, "Christina's needs a Mai Tai and a spry guy."

It was a long day going out to get him.  We took Christina with us and got her hooves trimmed.  When we got home he wasn't so sure about where we were leading him, so two of us pulled on his halter and two of us pushed him from behind.  Pretty soon he was running all over the pasture.  I hope he's happy here.  I really hope Christina turns up pregnant.

As we were driving home, we were thinking about how enormously helpful the dairy farmers we bought her from have been.  If we didn't have them in our lives, we are pretty sure we would have given up on cows by now.  There have been so many things to learn that no book covered.  But because they've always been available and helpful, we feel not only successful but confident.  Like so many times, God has provided wonderful people who have made this life possible.