Milk for Us

Christina continues to improve. Yesterday she seemed marginal, but she came out of it. Her eating is not quite up to normal, but it continues to improve.  This evening we will milk her out fully for the first time.  We are still seeing signs of mild mastitis but we're hoping that it will resolve with diligent milking.

This morning we had our first snow.  After milking, we turned jerky out with her while we cleaned the shed.  He bounded around in that wild, goofy way that babies do and Christina tried to keep up with him.  These times in the morning are becoming cow parties.

We are finding a functional pattern of letting jerky nurse while we milk.  It helps with the let down and he does his own work.   Christina is pretty full and it takes a lot of strength to milk her.  My arms have probably weakened in these two months too.

Christina is past the colostrum days and her milk is now for us.  Tomorrow we will make our first yogurt in two months, and maybe fromage blanc, and we're thinking about whip cream.  Monday I'll make cottage cheese.  These what-to-make-first decisions are difficult.

The storm we've been racing has come in, but the temperature has stayed above freezing.  Work continues on piping water out to the cows.  We got it dug out, laid all the pipe, and have most of it filled back in.  Tomorrow we'll enjoy some sabbath rest and we're hoping to finish Monday.  The kids were complaining about the work until I explained how much water they would have to cart out to the cows *every* day if we didn't do this.  The complaining stopped.