A dairy day

When you milk a cow, there are some points where things just ... stack up.

Maggie's milk output is decreasing. This is normal. A cow's lactation peaks when her calf is about a month old, and then starts a gradual decline. A couple months ago, I was routinely getting a gallon a day. Right now her calf Stormy is six months old, and Maggie is also pregnant, so both factors are contributing to a decrease in her milk output. Currently I'm getting between one-half and two-thirds of a gallon per day.

That said, sometimes things just ... stack up.

So the other day, I removed everything from our dairy fridge and sorted it out. I started by skimming all the cream. This is an unscientific process consisting of a soup ladle, which I use to ladle out the cream (which rises to the top).

Here's how much cream I get with a gallon of milk.

It's hard to see the cream line, so Don exaggerated the color for easier viewing.

Fresh milk needs to sit for at least 24 hours for the cream to properly rise. The older the milk, the heavier the cream.

Speaking of which, one of the things I was having trouble with is keeping fresh cream whipped. What I mean is, I'd whip cream into whipped cream, but within a couple of hours it would revert back to liquid form (very frustrating). Apparently commercial whipping cream is the really heavy stuff. So I thought: If I skim the really heavy stuff and whip it, will it stay whipped?

So I whipped some heavy cream...

...and it whipped up beautifully.

I put the whipped cream in the fridge. Sure enough, a couple of hours later it had reverted to a liquid state.

So I did a little research. Apparently whipped cream will stay in its whipped state with the addition of a little cornstarch.

So I mixed cornstarch with sugar...

...and whipped another batch of cream. As before, it whipped beautifully.

And as before, it reverted to a liquid state within a few hours. If anyone knows how to keep fresh cream whipped, I'm all ears.

Anyway, the next project was to make another batch of yogurt. I can't tell you how lovely it is to have homemade yogurt whenever I want! I use a Bulgarian yogurt culture, since it can be recultured over and over again.

I start by heating skim milk to about 180F.

Once it hits that temperature, I let it cool back down to between 106F and 113F, at which point I add the culture (in the small jar on the left).

I mix the culture thoroughly into the milk...

...then pour the milk mixture into the Yogotherm to incubate for about 12 hours.

Once the yogurt is cultivated, I scoop it out of the incubator bucket.

This is where I put aside a small jar of yogurt to culture another future batch.

Then I can sweeten and flavor the yogurt. Normally I'll flavor it with peach puree I canned up last year. (In fact, I can peach puree for the exclusive purpose of flavoring yogurt.)

The next dairy task was to make butter from all the cream. My butter churn holds about half a gallon of cream at a time, and I had two gallons of cream to get through. Thus, four churnings.

Cream needs to be at 60F to churn into butter with any reliability. It's also kinda boring, taking anywhere from 20 (not bad) to 60 (groan) minutes to complete. I've learned to churn at my desk and watch YouTube videos during the process.

Here's the newly made butter, still in the churn jar.

This is the paddle, laid aside in a bowl for the moment.

I pour the butter into a colander to drain the buttermilk (which I don't bother to keep)...

...then into a bowl for washing.

To wash butter, add cold water, squish the butter around, then pour off the cloudy water.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Keep repeating until the water no longer gets cloudy.

Then I weigh the butter, because the weight determines how much salt to add.

This is almost three pounds of butter.

A few days after this long day of dairying, I finally got my cheese cultures in the mail, which I ordered from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. (I've ordered from them for years.)

Starter cultures are used to ripen milk during cheesemaking. It's been so many years since I've made cheese, I hadn't realized things had changed a bit in how the cultures are packaged. It used to be I could order a culture, then reculture it in larger amounts. Now, the cultures come in individual packages, with each package meant to service the two gallons of milk necessary to make two pounds of cheese. Each envelope includes five packets of culture. In other words, five packets of culture would make only five batches of cheese.

Ah, but I'm a cheapskate, you see, so I decided to reculture the culture in larger amounts. Here's how I did it.

I started with mesophilic culture, which is used for (among other varieties) cheddar cheese. (Thermophilic culture is used to make mozzarella and other soft cheeses.)

I filled a pot with skim milk. Honestly, I didn't measure how much milk I put in; I think it was about 1.5 gallons or so. It doesn't matter; the single packet of culture can incubate as much as four gallons of milk, so whatever this quantity was, it was plenty.

I started by gently heating the milk to 180F.

Then I let the milk cool to 72F. When it had achieved this temperature, I sprinkled the culture into the milk, mixing it in quickly (I gather the culture shouldn't be exposed to air for any length of time) and covered it with a lid.

The most daunting task was keep the milk warm (ideally 72F) for the 24 hours or so it needed to culture. What I ended up doing was moving the pot of milk into the living room, not far from the wood stove...

...and smothering it in a pile of thick towels.

This seemed to do the trick, for the entire pot cultured into a very thick – almost gelatinous – mixture.

That's the stage where I am now. My next step (and I'll post photos as I get it done) is to spoon this mesophilic culture into ice cube trays and freeze them. I'll end up with an enormous bag of "culture cubes." When it comes time to make cheddar cheese, I'll pop about two cubes of culture into the milk to ripen it.

Cultivated in this manner, I'll have enough starter culture to last for years. In theory the fresh culture packets expire by next August, but as with the Bulgarian yogurt culture, I plan to reculture the cultures as often as needed.

Don is working on a cheese press for me even as we speak. I ordered some fresh rennet at the same time I ordered the starter cultures, so I'm looking forward to getting back into cheesemaking once again.

Product Review Monday

This week's product review is for something I've owned for at least 20 years: A Yogotherm yogurt incubator. It's been in storage for the last few years since we didn't have a milk cow. Now that I'm milking Maggie, I'm using it weekly once more. [NOTE: A reader pointed out that this product is no longer available on Amazon. I checked and she's right. I've updated the link to direct people to Lehman's. We won't make any commission from this link, but it's a good product regardless.]

There are endless yogurt incubators on the market, but most are all fancy and electric, which means they're more likely to break down. Yogotherm is, literally, a Styrofoam sleeve with a bucket inside. That's it.

To make yogurt, I heat the milk to 180F, let it cool to 110F, add the yogurt culture, mix well, and slip the bucket into the foam insulator and let it sit for 10 or 12 hours. That's it. Nothing to break, nothing to plug in. Easy peasey.

I use a Bulgarian yogurt culture because it can be recultivated indefinitely. 

When the yogurt is finished, I scoop a bit into a jar and keep it in the fridge. That becomes the starter culture for the next batch. Great stuff.

(Obligatory disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, if you purchase through those links, we earn a small commission.)

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Making yogurt

A reader asked how to make yogurt. It just so happened I had some pictures of the process but never got around to posting them. So...here goes.

Start with two quarts of milk. I like to use skim milk.


Add 1/4 cup of nonfat dry milk. This will add to the creaminess of the yogurt. Mix thoroughly and slowly heat the milk to 180F.


Don't stir during this time, just let the milk gently heat. When it hits 180F, turn the heat off and let it cool to between 105F and 115F. Again, don't stir. When the milk is cooled, there will be a thick nasty skin on top. Scoop this off and discard.


I like to use Bulgarian yogurt starter. I order mine from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. The reason I use Bulgarian starter is because it can recultured indefinitely.


Whatever you do, do NOT add the yogurt culture to the milk when it's hotter than 115F because it will kill the culture (been there, done that). Stir gently until the culture is thoroughly mixed.


Now the milk has to be incubated for a minimum of 5 to 6 hours (I usually incubate mine about 12 hours because I like a tarter yogurt). Anything can be used as long as the milk stays warm. Several years ago I bit the bullet and bought a Yogotherm Yogurt Maker. The reason I like this is it's nonelectric - it's literally just a plastic bucket that nestles inside a Styrofoam sleeve. You could probably put the milk behind the woodstove in order to stay warm; or inside a gas oven with a pilot light; or wrapped in towels and tucked inside a small ice chest. Use your creativity to come up with some way to keep the milk warm.



After the yogurt has incubated for several hours, remove the plastic bucket from the incubator and refrigerate overnight (or about 12 hours).

Before flavoring the yogurt, scoop out a few ounces and put it in a small container. Keep this in the fridge. This is your starter for the next batch.


To sweeten the yogurt, I use one cup of sugar or Splenda, then either add 1/4 cup vanilla (for vanilla yogurt) or some peach purree (peaches are my favorite fruit). Obviously you can flavor it however you like and to your taste.

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.