Lamb Videos

I went out and took a couple of short videos of the lambs hoping they would hop around for you. :) We still have 3 ewes we are waiting on. They all look chipper. Don't forget to turn the sound off in the side bar.

I heard about this new book that I would really like to get. If any of you have seen it and have a yeah or nay on it, I would love to hear what you think. It is about having a farm based cheese business.

Multi Generational Living

The Amish have a good thing going as far as the multi generational living arrangements. I have seen it work well in other families many times. Today, I got a small taste of it here. Joshua needed help at work today and asked his Dad to help him. So, they went off to take care of the job and Brittany stayed here with me. I had a lot to get done today and a lot more that needed to get done.

I had to bake bread. We were down to the end of a loaf that might have made 3 slices if they were sliced thin. I also had 10 gallons of milk in the refrigerator. We are getting another calf this weekend to help use up the excess milk. I did not want this to go to waste, so I needed to deal with at least part of it. I made butter and cheese. I also needed to get my cabbage planted.

I put the grain in the mill and started it. I got stuff ready to begin making bread. Then I started bringing in the milk and skimming the cream before pouring it into a big pot for the cheese. I had my hands full with what I was doing. Brittany went out and planted my cabbage for me. What a blessing that was. When the milk for the cheese was ready I poured the vinegar in and stirred. I have a hernia and I am not to lift heavy things. So, Brittany carried the big pot of milk to the sink and helped me to drain it.

It is such a blessing to have them around to help and to be able to help them out as well. I am looking forward to more of this with future generations.

Here is the cheese draining.

Here is the butter doing a bit of draining before I work it.

Here is my bread fresh out of the oven. The front loaf is cinnamon raisin bread. I put one loaf's worth of dough in the fridge for our pizza dough for tonight. Thank you Lord for the blessing and strength to do these tasks.

Homemade Cheese Spread

I had some milk that was getting a few days old, so I took the cream off of it. We will either make butter with it or use it in ice cream. I think I can guess how my guys will vote. =) I call it ricotta cheese and I use it in any recipe calling for ricotta. It is not a true ricotta however. Real ricotta is made from the whey of mozzarella cheese. I heat the milk to 140 degrees. Then I add about 1/4 cup of raw apple cider vinegar. I stir and stir and stir. If the milk does not separate, then I add another dollop of vinegar. Then I stir and stir and stir. I keep repeating this until you see the curds separate from the clear yellowish whey. The reason I really emphasized the stirring is you want to use as little vinegar as possible to make the curds separate. It keeps the vinegar flavor down. The stirring makes sure that you mix the vinegar all throughout the cheese. Then I drain off the whey and let the cheese sit in a colander to drain. Here is a picture of it in the colander. I had just turned it over, so you see the little bumps on top.

Once it is sufficiently drained, then I put it in a bowl. At this point, there are several things you can do with it. You can salt it a bit and use it as ricotta cheese. It freezes really well too. You can add honey or agave nectar to it and then use it as a cheese filling for danish or to spread on toast. I still add a wee bit of salt to bring out the flavor. What I normally do is add salt, garlic and Italian spices. I use this mixture as ricotta in baked ziti or lasagna. You can also use it as a cheese spread for crackers or bread. We also put some of it on our salads in place of feta. It has a softer texture than feta, but if you wanted it a bit firmer, just let the milk heat a bit more. The higher the heat, the more firmer/rubbery the cheese will be. I put some of this batch in my butter mold/press and made what you see below. The rest went into the freezer for some future use.

We went into the coop last night and checked out all the chickens. We ended up getting rid of 8 of them. We prayed before we did it that we would choose the right ones.