I’ve been doing some major planning today in regards to our dairy cow addition. With Buttercup now a year old we’ll be getting her bred in about 5 months or so so she’ll calve when she’s 2 and also when it’s warmer. That’s how we’ve always done it, even with the beefers. Beeves? Let’s just say heifers. Almost hurt myself there.
I’m planning on getting her AI’d and will more than likely use some red angus that we’ve been using for the other heifers. I’ll have to discuss this more with my husband, because I’d loooove to throw some more brown swiss in and possibly have another future milk cow. My luck it’d be a bull though..
I’ve been pricing butter churns and molds. The custom molds they make for butter where your farm name or last name or cows name shows up on the top of the stick are adorable and I’m a sucker but I don’t need it. I’m thinking those rubbery (silicone?) baking things that make small loaves would be perfect. Gosh, I can’t wait until I don’t have to buy butter anymore. Homemade is sooooo much better.
I’m not sure if I want a cream separator or not. It sure would be nice but I think I can get away with not having one. I’ll survive scraping cream the ol’ fashion way. Maybe. I’ll have to learn by trial and error.
Cheese making shouldn’t be too awful. We really only eat mozzarella here, not really any hard cheeses. Thank goodness. So that’ll be easy enough. Same for cottage cheese. Easy peasy. I’d love to figure out cream cheese. Goals.
I’ve read some places that you can freeze milk and then thaw and use it just as you would fresh. That seems odd to me and I’m going to have to research further and probably learn through good old trial & error. I’d like to be able to freeze it and then pull out a bulk of it and make a big batch of some sort of cheese. I’m putting this on my list to try once Buttercup freshens. (Freshen is a term used when a heifer/cow calves and is now producing milk).
I guess when it’s in writing, my major planning for today sucked. While I wrote three pages worth of pricing and notes, here it looks kinda silly! I just want to keep kind of a journal about our journey to being a homestead dairy, if anything, for me to look back on and see how hard I worked for it.
A picture of my sweet Buttercup from November 2016
—Ruby
A Girl & Her Chickens 