Homesteading in the Dark

Our Thanksgiving dinner was mostly homegrown, but not the turkey.  It was a locally-raised free range bird.  We spent a lot of money on it, but it was the best tasting turkey we've ever had.  We are feeling well affirmed for the expense.  A day of homegrown and homemade food on my great-grandmother's beautiful china was a specialness I've never experienced.

Our butter is yellow.  Really yellow.  High food-coloring frosting yellow.  Christina's butter has always been yellow, we've assumed it was because she was on pasture, but we've forgotten how dark it is.  This is the same dark yellow as our chickens' egg yolks.  During our two dry months, we ate commercial butter with its mild color.  Christina's butter is such a strong color that I feel like I'm putting frosting on my toast.  Because I grew up with margarine being the strong colored stuff, it creeps me out until I taste the flavor and confirm it really is butter.

The freezing weather has kept up and our hard-won water system is nonfunctional.  My husband thinks he may have figured out the problem, but needs to wait for a thaw to fix it.  A storm this weekend is supposed to bring higher temperatures.

In the meantime, we've instituted a bucket brigade after each milking to fill up the water tanks.  The girls half-fill four buckets and run them out.  Two girls can do it faster than the time it takes them to get dressed for the outdoors.

Our evening milking is in the dark.  It's been overcast which gives plenty of light for walking out to the cow shed.  As we go through this milking routine — my husband and I milking, me taking the milk in to filter while two girls run water out and help fill the cows' feeder — it makes me wonder if this life is feasible for a small family.  Would we be able to do it if it was just us?  Or is it made practical by our large family?  I am grateful that the burden is lighter because it is spread out.

Christina has developed a nasty habit of peeing when we milk.  She only does it when jerky is not nursing.  At first it may have been an accident, but it's feeling like a pattern now.  I read that you can break a cow of the habit by catching her pee in a bucket, so today we tried it.  My husband said that when he caught it, Christina had a look on her face like, what the heck is going on?   I hope so, that's the idea, to creep her out.

Our first cheese is cottage cheese.  Two gallons gave these curds, about six cups.  The process is the same as for hard cheese except you skip the pressing and aging.  In the store they add cream to the curds, but we leave ours dry.  With applesauce, it makes a wonderful lunch.

There are three gallons of milk in the frig calling to me to become a block of parmesan.  Being in the kitchen with warm milk sounds pretty good to me.