New Press

A new cheese press has come into our lives.  It's a dutch style, with weight hanging from a lever rather than using spring tension.  With water in a jug it's easy to adjust specific weights without straining my arms.  Praise God for the laws of physics.  I love it so far.  Milk is filling up the frig so I fit in a parmesan to my Saturday afternoon and got three gallons used up.

The cheese came out beautiful!  It pressed together like a dream.  Now it sits in brine (salt water) for 24 hours and then begins its long ten month aging.

I discovered an online garden planning software and got started on next year's garden.  Their color-coding makes it easy to ensure that I'm not messing things up by putting the same kind of plant in the same place.  I can move things around, and even set up succession plantings for plants that will finish early.  The next step is to look at how much we grew last year to increase/decrease based on what we used.  The kids think we should definitely grow more pickling cucumbers and dill.  Didn't we just finish last year's garden?

We ground our first corn and used it in bread and pancakes.  After popping the kernels off the cobs, we let them sit around a while to dry more.  They ran through my grain mill just like wheat and made a soft flour.  I might try polenta this week — don't you think polenta sounds better than grits or mush?

We still have a full frig with over three gallons of milk coming in every day.  I tried some cream cheese.  I've not had success with cream cheese following the directions, so I did it differently.  This evening when it's done draining, we'll know if it worked out.  I started some butter and made some mozzarella.  Mozzarella is fast and we can eat it immediately, but you have to pull it like taffy when it's just a hair too hot to touch.  I grab it and pull until I can't stand it — about one second — let go and do it again.  It sure is pretty.

Jerky seems so healthy — shiny coat, energy, bright eyes.  A friend of mine is a retired vet and he was telling me that jersey calves die easily.  He said it's hard to get them hungry because the milk is so rich.  I wonder if jerky is doing good because he only gets to eat twice a day when we milk and he gets hungry.  Although Christina isn't enjoying those powerful punches he gives to encourage let down.  We now think that some of the kicking she's been doing is directed at jerky to take it easy.  I found that if I lay a hand on his neck while he's nursing, he doesn't hit as hard and she kicks less.