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A brief account of activity...

I have been so quiet.. I know.. I've also been so very very busy. I have been making cheese like crazy this year. Nearly 2-3 batches a week. I'm also the primary one managing the dairy herd. This includes milking and feeding as well as care of the bottle calves. My computer has sat on it's stand off forever. I'm trying to dust the poor thing off and do some writing and planning and.. and.. just more things to add to my to do, I guess.

Hopefully, before too long I'll have my 25 gallon cheese vat going. It's a steam kettle we're converting to a water jacket cheese vat, which is surprisingly easy but has a few costs (not extreme) and some planning that has to be really figured out. Finally, the biggest problem is heat in my cheese house. Cheese likes to be warm when it presses for example and it's easier to hold temperatures if I'm not battling the cold. It's posing a bit of an issue so I just keep plunking out 6 gallon batches of cheese.

So, I do still exist...

Cheese.. cheese... cheese...

I spend a lot of time handing milk in various forms. I work with it all the way from beginning to end, udder to end product (i.e. cheese, butter). This is good and bad... Good because I control the quality of it bad because it limits my processing time. It's hard to get anything else done when your life is consumed by an abundance of milk.

I currently make cheese in a 6 gallon pot. Not nearly big enough for the volume of milk we're getting daily. I have a 25 gallon steam kettle to be turned into a cheese vat but that is a little bit away yet with some details to be worked out. But I need it now is the problem because I get 8-10 gallons of milk a day. That would put me making cheese every other day. Right now I'm desperately trying to keep up and failing miserably. All I would ever do is milk cows and make cheese (oh and wash all the equipment) if I actually could keep up. The end of the week is fairly nice though, as a good deal goes out the door for fluid milk sales.

So my goal today is to get three batches of cheese made today. So far I have Basil Queso Fresco in the press. It has a short press time of only 6 hours and next up is getting cow milk Manchego going. I'll finish off with a 4 gallon batch of mozzarella.

As a note, I've found mozzarella to be a good cheese for my older milk, generally 2 weeks old. I've done it with fresh milk as well but I try to save that for the pressed cheeses. Another good cheese for old milk is Queso Blanco so long the milk isn't sour. Funny things happen if the milk is sour.

I'm Pretty Excited!

I now have a new-to-me computer! A cute little Dell Latitude D400 that has Linux installed on it thanks to my most wonderful DH and friend CM (who found it in the garbage). The battery is shot but I'm okay there. I just leave it plugged in and never take anything for granted on the saving aspect of using it. It's still got a few bugs but hey!! At least I'm not radiating my hands with my cellphone. So now I can put together better blog posts, hopefully, much more easily.

In regard to the power system, it's still a work in progress. I've been bogged down with cheese making, as a cow just calved a couple weeks ago. I'm trying to keep up on the milk supply and get cheese aging for the purpose of selling and some eating. We primarily eat the flops. Like some Gouda I just made that blew... blah. I believe I have a cow with gas producing bacteria naturally abundant in her milk. Her cream bubbles when it sours.. It's all quite fascinating in the cheese making world all the crazy possibilities that can come out of a pot using the same ingredients every time. I'm hoping to do a little more blogging regarding cheesemaking and my experiences in the future.

Chicken Processing and Meat Bird Breeds

One of the best presents we've ever received is a Whiz-Bang Plucker built by my DH's wonderful mechanical engineer father. It has been fantastic! He made a few improvements to the design and fixed complaints that were discussed in the plans turning out a trouble free home built plucker! You can see it in the foreground of the picture below.

It's been interesting processing (in my mind it's butchering but processing is a more PC term I suppose) this year. We hadn't done much in the meat bird realm since moving here due to the difficulty of brooding off-grid.
Now, with a propane heat lamp, we have the usual brooding issues.

So our goal now is to start hatching our own meat birds. The Rainbows from S&H Poultry supposedly breed true.. we'll see, but whatever the case we've been pretty pleased with the birds we get from them. We started buying our meatbird chicks from them and continue to do so along with a couple other places.

My favorite meat breeds, in order:
Rainbows
Red Rangers
Freedom Rangers

Though I have a dislike for Freedom Rangers as they are the most apt to cannibalism if they get a little bit of stress. The Ranger roosters can be pretty mean. And thus far the Rainbows have had more breast blisters but in all breeds the blisters tend to only be on the roosters. Carcass wise, the Rangers seem to be a good all around bird and the Rainbows favor a higher weight for a better carcass. They all get to the size of small turkeys when full grown. Carcass weight being 8-10# for the roosters and 7-8# for the hens. When full size they have gorgeous fat deposits and a lot of it! I am most fond of the Rainbows because they are just plain pretty. They have no standardization of feather color. I sell feathers in a small amount and the variety of colors is rather helpful for diversity.

We're looking at trying S&G's Heritage White's this fall for a final batch for the year. They have a shorter grow time, which isn't normally ideal for us but they should be done before our winter really hits in January and February.

So why slow growers?  Because they have better flavor and health! I don't have the issues I would otherwise raising Cornish X. Nor are they as dirty. I've talked with many producers who dislike how lazy and dirty Cornish X are so I'm not making crazy claims! If you disagree please comment! Help me find some redeeming qualities in the Cornish X!

This and That...

To start off, the solar panel has brought a nice change when it comes to the power situation. We have more continuous power and continuous refrigeration. I didn't realize how much I missed continuous refrigeration ... but we still have work to do on the system. We built our generator as well. Pretty basic especially after blowing through three in the last four months. It's been super annoying. I haven't been able to use my washing machine the last couple months so laundry is way waaay behind! That's only one of the problems. But the power shed is coming together and it's pretty awesome.

Canning has been pretty non-existant this year. The garden is a veritable failure due to a number of factors. Even now, after having the baby, I can't seem to get out there to do any work. Now with ragweed in full tilt my allergies keep me out.

Always lots of things going on and never enough time to do them...

Solar...

It is dry. Not as dry as last summer but dry all the same.

I had my baby girl the end of June so now I'm in the healing stages. Though I'm pretty healed up already, I always push myself a little too hard.

Now onto solar... we bit the bullet and bought a 1 kW solar panel. We had to buy a solar charge controller as well. No home panel manufacturing this time, no time available for it. I've too many other building projects pending. But we spent a day hacking it together so it could be used while getting it's permanent location ready. So for the first time in nearly 4 years I have continuous power and refrigeration. The refrigerator is a big deal due to our dairy production and is what accelerated the purchase after the 3 generator deaths in a 3 month period.

Finally, my boys and I had a building project... making a solar oven. We used a styrofoam cooler as our box and lined it with aluminum foil. It works to heat water and can reheat food but not super good for actual cooking. It needs a little help yet.