Life of a Dairy Maid

All right so I guess I'm not the dairy maid . . . that's Hannah and Mattie. They are such good milkers. They can get more milk from our cow than Russ can. They don't balk at milking even when it's 5:00 am or -20 outside. We really don't know what we would do without them.

However, I'm the one who deals with the milk. We have been getting about 4 gallons a day. We have several people who like to get milk from us and that usually takes care of the extra. But sometimes it backs up on us. I have been learning how to make all kinds of things with the milk. I make my own butter from all the cream (we get nearly a quart of cream per gallon) It is so pretty and so tasty. Here's a picture of a bowl of freshly made butter.

(don't you want to spread that on some homemade bread?)

I've also learned to make yogurt. My niece Sarah had the recipe on her blog that I tried and I have LOVED it! It is so easy and so tasty. My little boys just eat it like crazy. (I unfortunately don't have a picture of it.) However, after straining my yogurt through cheesecloth for a few hours it makes yogurt cheese (very similar to cream cheese). I used this to make a cheese ball. It was very yummy. Of course we needed to have something to eat it on and so I made homemade wheat thins. They turned out surprisingly delicious. Here's a pic:

(mmmmm . . . I'm gonna have to make some more, this makes me hungry!)

I also learned how to make homemade mozzarella cheese. It's surprisingly easy and only takes about 30 minutes.

(pretty cool, eh?)

The next thing I tried was culturing my own buttermilk. My dad was raised in the south and loved to drink buttermilk. I learned to love it from him. I was really hoping that my home-cultured buttermilk would be drinkable. Alas, I don't like it well enough to drink it. However, it makes killer pancakes, biscuits, scones, etc. So I guess I'm happy.

It's fun to learn to do so many new things and to find ways to not waste our abundance of milk.