Busy day

Here's what we did today.

No cougar disturbances during the night. This morning, though, we moved the livestock into a new (small) pasture for a few days. This has the advantage that our bedroom window overlooks it. If there's a commotion during the night, we'll hear it more easily. And at least we'd be running through open field in pitch darkness with the shotgun instead of crashing through forest and tangled underbrush in pitch darkness with the shotgun. Besides it was time to rotate the cows anyway - the other pasture was eaten down.



I also had a day of processing milk. Matilda's up to almost five gallons a day, so I gotta do something with it. This morning I skimmed off all the cream I had in the fridge and warmed it to 80 degrees, then made butter. Here's five pounds of butter half-way through the washing stage.


Then I weighed it out in one-pound increments...


Laid them out on waxed paper...


Then wrapped them in one-pound butter balls. These go in the freezer.


I also made yogurt (this is the incubator). It will be ready by tonight, and I'll chill it overnight.


Here's my stove and counter at one stage. To the left is two gallons of milk in nested pots (for a double boiler) being made into cheddar. The weird striped can with the teddy bear is an el-cheapo tin I picked up at a thrift store. It's full of cheese wax, which is slowly melting so I can wax some cheese. The yellow things behind it are five air-dried batches of cheddar, overdue for waxing. The white jugs are what I use for milk, cleaned and drying.


Here's the cheese, half-waxed...


And fully waxed. I'll date it and let it age for 2 1/2 months.


Meanwhile, I helped Don put the auger on the tractor so he can start constructing a chicken coop.


He drilled two holes.


Matilda doesn't know what to make of this hole in the ground...


or the auger.


He put some pressure-treated 4x4's in concrete and braced them in place. That's all he could do today until the concrete dries.


A chicken coop is imperative because we got thirty chicks yesterday. We butchered our old flock last fall because they had stopped laying, and when we got Matilda we converted the old chicken coop into the milking shed. Now we need another coop.

Here are the chicks.


The yellow ones are Cornish-crosses, which are meat birds. They will gain weight with such awesome speed that they'll be ready to butcher in three months tops. The rest of the birds are for eggs, and they're a mixture of Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, Wyandottes, and Aracaunas. We won't get eggs for about six months, though.



That's all. As I said, busy day.