No sameness

I've read that milk production is related to how much food the cow has.  Since Christina has been giving so much milk, we've been experimenting with giving her less food.  Yesterday morning it all caught up with us.  She only gave one-and-a-half gallons — we're used to getting two-and-a-quarter gallons each morning (that's in addition to jerky getting his share).  Ack!  And then my husband remembered that Christina has been digging into stuff she normally doesn't get into.  We've decided that we'd rather have more milk and a content cow, so he gave her extra food.  

Here is this morning's milk in the same pail. That's a lot more milk — two-and-a-quarter gallons, just like normal.  Christina gave us a look like, this is not a complicated deal, you feed me and I give you milk.  Simple.

So, I'll keep doing lots of cheese-making.  We have high hopes that the cheese will be wonderful.  And we know that her production will go down over the year and there will be less for cheese.  Say, I wonder if cheese-making will get me out of some weeding this summer...  :-)

We had chili and cornbread for dinner last night. We pulled out the sour cream and discovered it was thicker than we've ever had it.  It was beyond perfect.  I racked my brain trying to remember what I had done differently but I have no idea.  I used the same culture, kept it warm the same amount of time.  It is just a happy surprise.  Store-bought eating is so much sameness.  Our eating has wonderful nuance and differences from week to week.  It's true that we work hard, but we eat so good.  So good.