Rest for a Moment

I took this pic of Jude, our only boy, with 2 of his 4 sisters in the backseat of the van. Isn't it sweet?

He is the best brother ever. Dante recently was at odds with all 4 girls at the same time it seemed and there was a lot of crying going on. I told him girls cry, so what? It's how we deal when nothing else works. Anyway, Jude navigates around all that estrogen beautifully, he and his Dad do enjoy a day to themselves though, every once in a while. I am seriously contemplating more and more life with 4 teenage girls in a house with only one, dismal bathroom. Eek, we're in for it.

Yesterday, we took a day to unwind a little. I've been working so hard in the creamery, I just needed to do less for one day. So, the pigs got a bunch of whole milk, I processed less, and took a nap, GASP! Then made the kids grilled cheese. I used our butter, which reminds of that gorgeous yellow/orange color of eggs from chickens on grass, and it actually turned the outside of the sandwiches that color. Beautiful! They inhaled them, and then we made 4 quarts of icecream. I'm trying to experiment with how I can get this icecream to the farmer's markets and keep it frozen the whole time. It was soooooooooo good, it completely wiped the kids out and they all promptly fell asleep for the night. Wow, that was easy, I should make them homemade icecream more often!

We are starting prep for the cheese cave, I'll probably work on that tommorrow. I can't wait! It is my dream! I am going to start a new variety of hard cheese this morning. I'm trying to match cheeses with individual cows that I have. I also keep notes on who's milk I used for each cheese, to see if any patterns arise. Teeny and Gale are the REALLY high butterfat cows, they are also the best graziers and their milk shows it as the color is even that much more golden and beautiful. Berretta and Happy have lovely milk for yogurt and drinking as the cream just doesn't seperate as drastically a little bit stays mixed in. It is delicate and pure tasting.

Amazingly, Happy appears to indeed still be bred! Yahoo, she was bred to a polled Jersey bull and she has a spiky poll, so I'm hoping for a heifer in mid August. This means that she needs to be dried off in 9-10 days but she is still producing about 4 gallons a day, talk about a persistant milker! Yikes! Ellie also appears to be bred, the first by our NZ Jersey bull, and due around the same time as much as I can guess. She was field bred, and I really don't have a concrete date, but she is making a small udder. She's such a pretty shiny black color and also polled, so we have a shot at TWO polled Jersey heifers in August. Just in time for my birthday.

I finally planted my peppers and young herb seedlings in our old Webber charcoal grill on my deck. It gets HOT out there. Let's see if I can get peppers out there. It is so cold here in coastal northeastern Maine. I believe we are zone 4, maybe 3 right here at the tip, that its VERY hard to get a ripe tomato or pepper. Forget about melons......

Whey is an excellent organic fertilizer for plants, just dilute with water first.