It takes three of us to milk. Jerky is so big that one of our nine-year-old daughters is assigned to put some weight on his neck so he doesn't butt so hard. Sometimes it seems he lifts Christina off her feet. I don't think he does, but a hard hit goes right through her and almost knocks me over.
After five weeks we are getting our milking muscles back. I can go two handed at a clip for half the time now; then my hands take turns to rest. Her udder is warm on my cold skin.
Our butter churn jar broke. Dang. I searched the internet and found replacements for $50 and up. Ack! We found that with a little trimming, these old plastic jugs work. The churn doesn't screw on, but still works. The big secret is culturing the cream before we churn it. We warm the cream up in a water bath to about 85F, add a few frozen cubes of the culture, and wait a day. It's not quite sour cream consistency but close and the churn gives real resistance. It breaks in only fifteen minutes of pretty lazy churning.
A batch of cottage cheese uses up two gallons of skimmed milk and the kids love it with applesauce.
There are four-and-a-half gallons of skimmed milk hogging up space in the frig. Today I might try my first romano.
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