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Hi Everyone,
It has been really hot outside lately, but truth be told I haven’t had much opportunity to experience the heat. We have been getting so much milk, that we have been busy in the milk house dealing with the abundance. In the last month I have only made it to the garden six times—yet there is so much to do in the garden. It never fails that something comes up in the month of July and the garden gets away from us. I did manage to work in the garden for an hour and a half on Thursday. While I went there to harvest the okra, beans, peppers, and eggplants—instead I spent my time weeding the okra. By the time the okra was all weeded, it was after 5:00, and since we had not eaten lunch, I had to hurry and get inside to cook. I did harvest the cayenne and paprika peppers, and then I harvested just enough okra for dinner. Life around here has been, well . . . crazily busy.
When I woke up Monday morning—it was just another day on the farm. Little did I know that it would turn into one of THOSE DAYS! At 7:00 Steve’s wife called to say that Steve was too sick to come to work—he had eaten something that didn’t agree with him. That meant that Papa would have to go pick up Moises, and Papa would have to do all of Steve’s chores. While Mom fixed breakfast, I headed over to the milk house to set up the milking equipment. After breakfast, Papa headed out to the pasture to bring the cows in and it was around 8:30 when Papa headed to get Moises. While Mom did the dishes, I took all the equipment to the milking parlor, and then I put the first three feeders (America, Sally, and the Bull—Dijon) in the parlor to eat while we finished getting ready. By 8:45 Mom and I were ready to start milking—but I saw a big spider web in the dark corner of my feed room behind the milking stalls. There were three egg sacks, and the spider looked like a black widow to me. I ran to get my flashlight, and when I returned—I caught sight of one of the ugliest spiders that I know of. I call it an Octopus spider for it is big and brown with a large body, and very long, thick legs. I have no problem killing a black widow spider, but Octopus spiders (aka Large Brown Spider) are more than I can handle. They are just too big and ugly for me. Let’s just say that I lost it—but Mom came to the rescue. She got rid of the ugly spider and the black widow with all of her eggs. It was now around 9:00, and we were ready to start milking. Moises arrived around 9:20—just in time to get Mom and me some more alfalfa for the cows, because our barrels were empty. By 10:30 we were done milking, and since Steve was not here, Mom and I had to bottle the milk—and we got 20 ½ gallons.
Since we have been creaming our extra milk, and Papa has not had the time to spread the skim milk out on the pastures—great fertilizer, I had been making a lot of curds and whey. When I say a lot, I mean a lot—as in four, two gallon glass jars, and six, five gallon buckets. In order to make curds in whey, we let the skim milk sit out in the milk house for a few days until it separates. Like most arts—we have no control of the outcome. Some will be done in two days, some in four; some with separate with a big ball of cheese floating on top of the whey, and some the whey will float on top of the curds. Then there are those batches that do not do at all. Once the curds and whey separate we move the container to the walk in cooler until we can pour the cheese and whey into a cloth, and hang the cheese to drip—removing the rest of the whey. This all takes lots of time—an hour to cream the milk, and hour to wash up the cream equipment, and a few days to separate. Once it goes to the cooler, then we have to find the time to drain it, hang it for twenty-four hours and then package it. On Monday I was determined to get as much of the curds and whey that was in the cooler—to the draining stage. We got out the big white enamel wash pan, and lined it with a large tea towel. Then we dumped in one glass jar, and may I warn you that it goes Glop! Glop! Glop!—as big chunks of cheese fall out with the liquid whey. Then we tie the corners together to make a cradle, and hang it on a stick over a bucket. You have to tie your corners very carefully, because you do not want any of the cheese to spill out into the pretty whey. Once the corners are tied, and the stick threaded through the loops, then we have to carry the contraption into the walk in cooler and hang one side of the stick on the shelving unit, and the other side on an ice chest so that the cheese is elevated over a bucket. Sometimes a stick can have two or three bags of cheese hanging on it. Mom and I got two glass jars, and one five gallon bucket drained and hung in the cooler. We still had two glass jars and five more buckets to go—but we were tired. I talked Mom into doing another bucket, but when we poured it into the tea towel; we realized that it had not separated properly. We decided to put it back into the bucket. We each picked up two corners of the towel, and lifted it up to the bucket which was sitting on the table. We got it over the bucket just fine . . . and then it happened! I managed to pick my side of the towel up higher than Mom’s and therefore, the cheese spilled out of the towel all down the front of Mom’s brand new dark blue jean jumper. We both laughed—but I got the giggles so bad that I had to run to visit “Mr. John”. When I returned I was horrified to see just how big of a mess I had made. There on the floor was Moises with a rag and a bucket, and Mom had a mop. Four feet of the floor was covered an inch thick with this cheese mess. Little by little the mess disappeared. The cheese had splattered everywhere, and I had to rewash the outside of the milk tanks—which Moises had already washed. Once the mess was cleaned up then Moises went back to washing the milking equipment, and Mom and I proceeded to wash all the cheese equipment—buckets, glass jars, bowls, spatulas. At this point it started to rain—and I had to run to the house to put down the garage door and rescue the butternut squash from the back porch railing. At 1:30 Moises was done and clocked out, Mom and I still had 20 yogurt containers to rinse out. We got them done, cleaned up the sink and then I turned around and there were the two glass jars—we had forgotten to wash them. We made up another sink of soapy water and then the phone rang—Mom’s sister called to chit-chat. I finished washing the jars and then I got the sink all cleaned up, and I was hanging the milk tanks up to dry. I was tired and hungry, and could hardly carry on—but I wasn’t done yet! When I picked up the last milk tank I realized that some of the cheese had splashed inside—so I had to rewash the inside of the tank. It was 2:40 when I finally headed over to the house. Papa asked me what was for lunch, and I told him that he had better make him a sunbutter and honey sandwich. I realized that it was getting late, and I still didn’t have my chicken in the oven for dinner. I quickly put the chicken in the oven, and then I fixed me a sandwich and sat down at the table to eat lunch with Papa. As I was telling Papa all about the trials of the morning, I reached for something and knocked over my water glass. At this point I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Papa jumped up and grabbed some towels. Then we had to take the summer décor off the table, all three pieces of glass off the table, and then all the linens off the table. By 3:20 I finally finished my lunch, and now I had to make the 20 quarts of yogurt. Mom headed to the brooder house to work on a new door since we had divided the building into three rooms instead of two.
Once I was done with the yogurt it was 4:00 and Mom and I had to head to town to look at some wood for the wall in my bedroom. It was a little after 5:00 when we got home—and might I say that I was crashing, but it was time to cook dinner. While I was cooking, I realized that I needed to make kombucha. I started to make it on Saturday, but realized that I did not have any water—so Papa got me some while he was making deliveries. Thankfully I am only making 3 gallons of kombucha at a time, so it doesn’t take very long. By 6:45 dinner and the kombucha were done—but the table needed to be put back together since I had washed and dried all the linens. When dinner was done, I took the chicken bones and the cooking liquid and put them in a stock pot and added carrots, onion, celery, salt, pepper and water so that I could bake it in the oven at 250 all night. We were all done with our work for the day by 8:00, and we treated ourselves to an American History lesson that Hillsdale College provided free of charge online. It had been a long hard day, and I gladly sunk into my bed at 10:00.
Steve was back to work on Tuesday, but only for half a day. The Durmaz family came over after lunch to help us package eggs. Then after they left, Mom and I had to bottle the whey and then package the quark that had been hanging out in the cooler, and I had to bottle the kefir. It was another day spent in the milk house.
Thursday arrived and on the list was Milk the cows, Cream the milk, Bottle the Kefir, Make Yogurt, and hang the rest of the curds and whey. I headed out to milk the cows at 8:30, and I came inside for lunch at 3:00. This time I had Steve to help me—for we had 50 turkey poults arrive and the brooder house had to be cleaned out, fresh bedding put in, and the turkeys settled into their new home by mom. After Monday—Mom wasn’t stepping foot into the milk house, and by the time Steve and I were done—Steve was envious of Mom. We had three tanks of milk to cream, and the first two were done in record time—fifteen minutes, but the third one took half an hour. I guess the cream was getting thicker and thicker. Then while Steve cleaned up all the cream equipment of which there are two cream machines and each machine has 24 parts each, I bottled the kefir and got the two glass jars of curds and whey drained into the towel and hung on the stick. Then I needed Steve to help me with the four buckets that were remaining. Really and truly, the cheese in the buckets is too much for the towels, but Tiare is proven to be quite daring—to the anxiety of others. It is with great care and trepidation that we tie the corners of the towels. We got the first bucket drained; the towel tied, and hung on the stick. Then we had to carry it into the cooler. Steve kept lowering it too low, or raising it too high so I was constantly having to work hard to keep the cheese from spilling out—and we managed. We had three buckets left to go. One bucket did not separate properly, so we fed it to the chickens and dogs. That left us with two. Both sticks already had bags of cheese hanging on them, but I needed to add another bag to each stick. We got the first one done, and we got it into the cooler—but I couldn’t figure out how to get it on the stick for the first stick was in the way, or was the ice chest in the way. We tried to angle the ice chest over a little, but Steve moved it too fast and the sticks came crashing down spilling out the cheese onto the cooler floor—but thankfully only about a cup. Steve grabbed up both sticks—but he was on the other side of the ice chest, and I was holding four gallons of cheese hanging in a bag. We couldn’t figure out what to do—we didn’t have enough hands, so we called for Moises. Moises moved the bucket around under the dripping bag of whey and cheese while Steve and I managed to get the stick threaded through the loops on the tea towel. When we had accomplished it, everyone’s anxiety was running high—and we still had another bucket to go. It went much easier, and when we were all done we swore off of five gallon buckets to make curds and whey in. I had all the quark and whey that I needed—so Papa had to spread out the skim milk from Thursday’s creaming. I could literally use a person to run a creamery right now—for skim milk is what you use to make Romano cheese, cottage cheese, and Traditional Ricotta cheese. On Thursday I kept Moises until all the milk, cheese, kefir, whey, and yogurt mess was all cleaned up. It was 3:00 when I came in for lunch—or should I call it a snack, for Papa was busy mowing and he refused to stop for lunch, and Mom decided to take some left over pumpkin pie and top it with yogurt. Mom put honey on top of hers, and I put some caramel sauce on mine. Then I had to finish making the yogurt. When I was all done I made a mad dash for the garden—even though it was hot.
Friday was our first day to process 70 chickens, and we were thankful to have the whole Durmaz family back to help. To our delight it went very smoothly and it took us the same amount of time to do 70, as it has been taking us to do 40. Practice truly makes things go perfectly!
Saturday Mom and I had a very relaxing afternoon—and may I say that we had earned it. Two of Mom’s sisters were traveling through Lake City so we met them at Panera Bread and sat outside and ate lunch and visited for a few hours.
I wish I could say that life was going to calm down soon—but that would be a lie. We shall see how this week plays out—maybe I can get to the garden!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare