Focus: Dairy

 

Did I say I was going to start blogging more?
A month ago?

Hmmm. Today, I was thinking through what to write about and was getting overwhelmed by all that goes into our every day and how to put that all in words (and have a picture to include!)

Like every year, there's stress around Christmas. There's the ambivalence too. And the determination to make gifts, but not the motivation.

But thinking through what to write ... what's the biggest, overarching, stay-up-late, big project currently?
The dairy.
Hands down.
We're planning to put a dairy in to make and sell cheese.
Yay!
Super exciting.
And more importantly, super yummy.
Our hard drive is filling up with plans and copies of the state regulations.
Our book shelves are filling up with dairy and cheese related material.

Rant-y Part
And it's overwhelming.
All of it!
Mostly because it's so frustrating to me that we can't sell farm grown/made products but it's perfectly legal for monsanto to copyright seeds, parents to smoke in front of their children, and forests to be clear cut. But a person can't make an informed decision, as a consumer, about where and when they buy their food.
The rules seem so backward to me!

Rant Over
So ... this is really Ren Man's thing. I totally support cheese making (mostly because I love cheese) but have little interest in cheese making (soap making, agritourism, animal chores, blogging, marketing ... sign me up!).

We started with the idea of retro-fitting a detached garage but after consulting with a contractor realized it would cost more to retrofit the garage (which I'm now crossing my fingers to convert to a custom slaughter house one day ... but the dairy first). So Ren Man is sketching out plans (not with paper and pencil - with sketchup). He's been in brief discussion via email with the inspector's supervisor and plans to submit tentative dairy plans before the end of the year.

When the plans are approved we then have to come up with the funding (hoping to get most of our funding from customers signing up for our farm-credit/CSA option, but anticipate needing to get a loan).

And then we will build.

So the biggest issue of the biggest issue is .... funding. But that's normal, and doable, and we're very very excited about this project. Our enthusiasm continues to strengthen as our community grows with increasing support. We are regularly having people approach us to tell us that they love seeing active farming happen at our place again. We've had several relatives of the original farmers of this property glow with stories of their past with this place and with the anticipation of what the future of farming will be on this property. We're thrilled to be the stewards of this land and honored to be part of its woven story.

Any ideas around any of this (building design, the actual building, funding, cheese making, etc!) welcome!!

PS The picture above was taken last spring ... we're no longer hand-milking for several reasons. There are pros and cons to hand-milking vs. machine milking and somewhat sadly we realized that machine milking was the best option for us.

and now I don't sit down

It's never ending.
It's exhausting.
It's overwhelming.
It's awesome.

 

Shadow (above) is milked twice daily, usually by hand. It takes about 10 minutes, maybe 15 to actually milk. Another 5-10 minutes to get a rag ready to clean her teats, walk out to wherever she is in the pasture, hook her collar to a chain connected to something sturdy to keep her in about the same place during milking, wash her off - and then milking starts. My arms and hands are tired, tired during milking. I think I'm milking out one full quarter and another half of a quarter - Ren Man does the rest. He can even do all four if I'm not around - something I have to get better at because he's going to be going away for a night to defend his dissertation. Oh, I'm sorry - you might be shocked too. Sit down. Ren Man is going to defend his dissertation on June 18th. So I need to be ready to milk solo for two milkings, at least. Hope, the other girl, is slated to calf at the end of June. I'm crossing my fingers that that calf stays put until after Ren Man comes back. I'm not nervous about the calving - just the milking two cows part.

 

We picked up two piglets recently - tiny tiny piglets. That's me holding the biggest of the three. We got them at a week old. The sow attacked the babies on sight and the farmer rescued the three surviving (there were five). The farmer, however, had a 3 year old and a four month old so felt she couldn't raise these three too. They had spent the week in her kitchen. We put them right outside our back door in a room that is the size of a garage but has no garage doors or anything (on the listing they called it a shed) for a week. Then they got too stinky for that. They are now in the barn and are wrestling with each other and running around - now that they have more room. They are very very young. I would generally not feel comfortable buying piglets from someone who was weaning less than 8 weeks, or possibly 6. Given these piglets situation, it felt slightly like a rescue operation. I named them Cedar, Poplar, and Aspen. Now we're just waiting for them to grow big and strong (on milk) so we can have them outside rooting around. In the meantime we may borrow some pigs from a farmer who raises pigs in our town to till some land and clear the woods of brush.

 

We raised about 30 egg-laying-to-be chicks soon after we moved in. They are now in our side yard with electric netting around them growing big enough for me to feel comfortable to move them (and their netting!) out of the yard. In the meantime we're enjoying their antics. The chick pictured above is from our meat set. They are now about 2 weeks old and I can't wait to get them outside! As a rule we wait for them to be 3 weeks old. There are probably 65 of these guys. They were acting like "normal" (egg-laying-to-be) chicks until a few days ago when they suddenly gained a passion for their feed.

 

Last year I had a lag in blogging because it was all so complicated and disheartening. This year the poor blog suffers because I'm outside constantly (I've self-diagnosed myself with a mild sun allergy. Between that and the black flies ... well, you know) and we've been out and about with new friends, inviting new and not so new friends over for dinner/visits ... I usually am out of bed by 7:30am and fall into bed by 11pm ... and sitting in between doesn't really happen.

Mother Earth News

 

Mother Earth News
I love this publication.
It was fun to discover when we were in Providence.
I'm not sure how I stumbled across it.
I happened to mention it to my dad as this great resource I found.
He said he's been subscribing on and off since the '70s.

So now he brings us the latest issue whenever he's done with one (pretty much every time we see him).
I love this publication.
Have I said that already?

Every issue is incredible - cover-to-cover.
I have a random issue next to me with cover stories like:

Build an Easy Hoop House to Grow More Food (very excited about this - won't work with our snow load, but still exciting to read about)
How to Get the Best Firewood for Clean Energy (yay for wood heat and some wooded acres that need thinning!)
Five Low Cost Outdoor Root Cellars (my dad is more excited about this than me because I'm hoping we can use the basement as a root cellar and not have to dig through snow to find our diy root cellar)
Create Better Soil with Cover Crops
The Astonishing Story of Real Milk

All exciting stuff combined with a joint interest with my dad is pretty awesome.
Ren Man purchased a dvd of 40 years of lots of Mother Earth News goodness.
This publication has been vital in our day to day life as we did as much "farming" as we could in our urban rental - how much more so now that we're farming "for real".

What's your favorite farming-related magazine?

Milking

Originally posted on the farm blog on May 5, 2011




It seems there should be a picture of me (Sarah) milking. But I'm often the one with camera in hand and Josh is not so hot on multitasking- he's milking, or his photographing - he's not doing both.
I started milking two days after we moved.
Josh wants to wait until the cows are out of the barn (probably at the end of this month).
I wanted practice in milking.
This morning was my tenth milking (I've opted out of milking twice since coming).
Josh has milked twice.
He's an excellent milker.
I'm getting better every day.
Morning milking starts at 5:15am (in theory, it's usually 20 minutes later that it actually starts).
And there are cats.
And one likes to jump on shoulders. I've avoided being jumped on so far. Josh was jumped on during first milking. I don't think he believed me when I said it would jump.

Milking is interesting. It's a rhythmic pattern that allows for thinking through the to-do's for the day. It's also funny how you get to know each cow. This one is nicknamed Thumper because she bangs the grain feeder when she runs out to make more come out, 33 is always in the last batch to come in to be milked, the one nicknamed Spike (because of a tuft of hair on her head that sticks up) is always filthy, 40 milks out slow, another one kicks ever time you touch her ...

The barn is stuffy. I think the cows are looking forward to getting out in the fresh air as much as we're looking forward to getting them out!