Chemistry Fun for Adults

We finally got a test kit for mastitis.  You squirt some milk from each quarter into the little pot, add some fluid, and swirl it around.  If any mucousy stuff forms, you've got a problem.  Only one quarter showed a problem (the upper right) and it matches the "weak positive" description.  So we've got a mild problem in one quarter. 

Of all the vet stuff we've had to do, this is the funnest.  It's chemistry set for grown ups!

Those days of wondering if she really has mastitis and which quarter it is in, is over.  With such a weak infection, it was never obvious.  It's nice to know exactly where the problem is.  Each test takes 12ml of fluid and we have a gallon of the stuff.  We can test willy-nilly whenever we want to! 

Because the problem is mild, we'll add an extra milking for the next few days and see how it goes.  It's nice being able to test regularly to see how things are doing. 

My kids have grown used to, "everybody drink some milk, I want that jug finished."  Last night with spicy pepperoni, they drank lots, even without being told.  So that's the secret.  Just give them spicy food.  We're thinking of chili with homegrown cornbread for dinner tonight.

It's time to sterilize some milk for culture again.  Sterlizing milk is easy, just fill jars with skimmed milk and boil in a water-bath canner for 30 minutes.  After they cool down I'll use them to re-culture the cheese starter cultures.

We have more skimmed milk than we can keep up with.  This sterlized milk used up two gallons, but we have three more sitting in the frig.  I could make cottage cheese, but we have plenty.  I could make yogurt, but we have plenty of that too.

Our youngest will be three in a few months and we are hoping to be at the end of his diapering time.  Yesterday he sat on his little potty in between diapers and had his first pee.  It was probably a mistake, but it's still pretty exciting. 

We used a cloth diaper service with our oldest (now 19 years old), then disposables with the girls, and went back to cloth with the youngest.  In hindsight, I wish we had done cloth all along.  Cloth diapers are so easy now adays!  There are no pins to get you and the diaper covers are easy to put on.  Washing diapers is no more effort than dragging diapers home from the store and then out to the trash.  And, to our surprise, they don't smell as bad.  With disposables we were constantly doing battle with smell, even with fancy things like DiaperGenie.  With cloth diapers, we shake the really smelly stuff into the toilet before tossing the diaper into the pail, so we have less smell with just a plain covered trash can. 

Blue Fries

We grew blue potatoes this year.  I thought they looked cool, but I dreaded the kids balking, "they're not the same as store bought!"  They can be so fussy.  Last night we ate our first ones as french fries.  It turns out that blue fries are not creepy.  The kids loved them!  They taste the same as regular to me, but they loved that they were blue.  They said we should grow more next year.  Praise God!

 Today we cook one of our own chickens.  I really like the beef that we bought directly from a guy here in the valley, but there is something so special about meat we raised ourselves, and butchered ourselves.  Chicken pot pie is one of the girl favorite things and with everything homemade, I think they are responding to it being food deliberately given them by God.

My mornings begin with one of my favorite tasks, skimming and pouring milk.  After milking Christina, and putting away the fresh milk to chill, I pull out all the milk from yesterday with risen cream.  We got four gallons!  I had labeled each jar with the date and "a" for am or "p" for pm.  There is something about the gentle skimming of the rich cream into the much more manageable half-gallon jars that I deeply enjoy.

At end we had 1-1/3 jugs of cream (center), three jugs of drinking milk (right), and a little more than two gallons of skimmed milk to use later (left).  Yesterday I made cottage cheese out of two gallons of skimmed milk, so we don't need more of that.  Maybe I'll make a parmesan.