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.

Ever since we started milking Maggie, I was looking forward to trying one of our more cherished acquisitions: A butter churn.

This marvelous contraption has been parked on top of our hoosier for about two years, ready and waiting.

This butter churn is pricey – somewhere on the order of $200 – and as far as I know, it's only available at Lehman's (which I believe manufactures it). I've been coveting this churn for a long time. About two years ago, I proposed to swap some writing for it, and the swap was accepted.

And then there it sat: Waiting, waiting, waiting...

At last I had the opportunity to try it. I had saved up a bit under a gallon of cream, then let it sit on the kitchen counter overnight to "ripen." (This is the second of two half-gallon jars; I didn't think to photograph both jars together until too late.)

I churned the butter in two batches, since the gallon jar of the churn isn't supposed to be more than about half-full (to give everything room to expand).

The handle of this churn turns easily. I timed it: It takes 12 minutes to churn the cream into butter.

I poured and scooped everything into a cloth-lined colander.

Then it's time for the most tedious and time-consuming step: Washing the butter, which gets rid of the buttermilk. (Yes, buttermilk can be saved for other purposes, but I didn't do that this time. Keep in mind fresh buttermilk is different than the cultured buttermilk available commercially. It's very thin and milk-like, rather than thick.) At this stage, the butter is very loosey-goosey, and since it's hydrophobic, it's a matter of endlessly filling a bowl with cold water, squishing the butter around, then pouring off the water/buttermilk combo. Rinse and repeat, literally. Again and again and again.

Can you see the cloudiness of the liquid? That's buttermilk still coming out of the butter, making the water look white.

This is the point where I use another Lehman's tool, one I purchased on my first visit to the store: A curved butter paddle. This is an aid for pressing buttermilk out of butter. It's been sitting in our hoosier for ten years, waiting its turn. Now at least I could put it to use. (It works great!)

Washing butter takes about 30 or 40 rinses until the water runs clear. After that, it's a matter of squishing the butter to extract any remaining water.

From this batch, starting with about 1.75 quarts of cream, I got about 2.25 lbs. of butter.

By some suggestions, butter should be left out for another few hours, then worked again to pull out any remaining water. I covered the butter with a plastic bowl cover during this time.

Then it was time to wash up.

The next morning, I pressed the butter one last time to extract any remaining water, then added salt. I kept forgetting how much salt to add, so I finally wrote it on a tiny piece of tape and stuck it on the kitchen window frame: 3/8 teaspoon per pound.

For what I don't put in the fridge for immediate use, I freeze. For freezing, I plop about half a pound of butter onto some waxed paper, wrap it, and slip that into a plastic bag, which I then tuck into the freezer.

All spare cream is going into butter at this point. (I'm not making cheese yet; I still need a cheese press!) Homemade butter is delicious and easy. I'll make all I can – while I can.

Seems like the days fly past since once again it's time for our Friday Roundup, where we all pitch in the things we did during the week -- big or small -- that contributed toward self-sufficiency.

We've had a productive week, even working through an early and nasty heat wave (highs in the low 90s, ug). Here's what we got done this week:

• Our cow Victoria (the dark red animal) had her calf out in the pasture, a little bull (here Polly is sniffing at him).



Victoria is an experienced mama so I wasn't worried. We'll have to capture the little guy and castrate in a few days. Meanwhile Younger Daughter named him Jerky. As in beef.


• Our Jersey Giant chicks arrived at the post office.


Considering the breed is giant, the chicks are sure tiny. But they all looked healthy (we also have one "mystery bird" the hatchery threw in for free).


We set up a box with food and water (and later a heat lamp).


After dipping each one's beak in water (to teach it how to drink)...


... they settled into their new home.


So far they appear to be a very calm breed. The chicks are less "hysterical" when we change their food and water.

• Don worked like mad through that hideous heat wave, finishing up the fence area he tore out last week in order to re-do it properly. He mixed concrete in the tractor bucket...


...straightened all the poles, and set them up.


He took a trip to town and splurged on ten cattle panels (sometimes called hog panels). They're expensive, but we're love them because they're sturdy, long, and portable (meaning, we can move them from place to place as needed). We try to buy a few every year, so this is our year's allotment.


Then he installed the panels to the poles. He wants to fasten boards top and bottom to lock the panels in place (and prevent the animals from pushing them either at top or bottom), but he delayed this step because of the heat.




Doesn't it look great?


• He also set up the cattle panels in a clever gate system to span the driveway and make a "chute" between one pasture and the other, which means we don't have to rotate the cattle around the entire property before putting them in the woods. At sunset the day Don finished the fence, we tried out the system. We can even close the gate at the end of the driveway so the animals can crop the grass growing along the road.


Here Brit is waiting impatiently for Don to open the fence.


The animals all respond to our universal "Bossy bossy bossy" call, and milled around the fence until we opened it up.



Victoria made it through the gate just fine, but little Jerky (only 24 hours old at this point) got lost, so I heaved him up and carried him across the driveway.


But Don's new gate system worked flawlessly. Within moments the cows were on the cooler wooded side of the property, which offered them shade from the broiling temperatures (although as of this writing, the heat wave has broken, whew).


• This isn't really preparedness-related, but I noticed this group of ravens gathered on a distant treetop.


We've been having ravens all over the place lately. Don't know why.


• I skimmed all the cream from the milk which had accumulated in the fridge, and made three pounds of butter (which I froze).


• A neighbor made about a dozen trips over with his trailer to get compost to work into a large garden area. Don loaded it with the tractor.


He cleaned out a lot of our compost, which is great since we now have room to re-pile more as it comes.


• The girls picked strawberries. Third time this week. The berries are starting to ripen fast.


• We got the drip system up for the ancillary vegetables -- bell peppers, cayenne peppers, broccoli -- that I started in the house.


Then I got everything planted. I don't think the broccoli will make it, though.


Here are the cayennes.


• Didn't get photos, but we got the corn tires topped with compost. The next step is to get the drip system in place, and plant seed. It's awfully late to plant corn, but I have enormous confidence that the short-season open-pollinated variety we tried last year, Yukon Chief, will yield successfully. Last year we planted on June 5 and harvested on August 29, and got 600 ears. I'm hooked on this corn variety.

That was our week. What have you done?