The Pied Piper...

Prepping to milk in the winter feels a lot like getting ready for a space walk. Insulated pants, boots, a jacket, a coat, a scarf, a hat, gloves to wear and spares in your pocket in case you get wet…all that’s missing is the space helmet. I was like the pied piper this morning, with a little group of turkeys and Herbie the Duck following me around hoping for treats while I was feeding the cows and sheep in my space suit...

Yesterday after work, I finished up the buttermilk cheese I’d started on Sunday night. It turned out dry and crumbly – similar in texture to feta but with less flavor. I was cautious in souring, so the cheese is a little bland but will taste good mixed with herbs or on top of some greens. The next time, I’ll try souring it a bit longer to see if it gives the cheese a sharper flavor. No matter how long I make cheese, there is still that strange Western part of me that has a hard time leaving milk out on the counter for days to culture or sour. When you grow up in the city, you’re taught not to spoil food which doesn’t always work in homesteading food preservation – catching wild yeast, making preserved dairy foods, fermenting wine…all seem counter-intuitive to the ways we’re taught to handle food in the US.

It’s a busy week here...we are expecting a shipment of bull semen this week which will need to be handled immediately and put in to cryo-storage, and we need to have the vet out to vaccinate our full-size calves. We’re in the process of finishing the construction of a stantion to use for doctoring the cows. Now that we are dealing with 7 cows, instead of just 1 or 2, they are all in different stages when it comes to their comfort with being handled and we are within 75 days of our first calf of the year. Our youngest pregnant heifer got an infection in her jaw late last year, and needed antibiotic shots for several weeks. Trying to inject her, even when she was haltered and held by two or more adults, turned in to a rodeo every time. The two beef steers are far waspier than the dairy cows, and we need to be prepared in case they need veterinary care prior to slaughter.

We are regularly incubating 1000 quail eggs each month, and are expecting 500 or so to hatch out this weekend. I used to think winter was our “down time” but it actually seems like we are busier when it’s cold than when it’s warm, since chores take so much longer when the ground is alternately frozen and flooded, there is no irrigation water, and everyone is cold and needs to be supplemented with feed because the forage is limited. Sometime this week, I’ve also really got to fire my kiln…

Although we’ve had our ram, Tchin’dii, in with the ewes since Fall I don’t know if we’ll have Navajo-Churro lambs from our flock this year. He seems interested in the girls but doesn’t seem all that interested in doing anything about it and we’ve yet to catch any of the sheep “doing the deed.” Matt bought me a chalk vest to put on Tchin’dii, but Churros are notoriously wild and afraid of humans, even if they were hand-raised. It hasn’t seemed worth the hassle to tackle him just to put on the vest. I guess that if we end up with lambs this spring, it will definitely be a surprise!

Last night’s self-sufficient dinner was beef enchiladas. I use a recipe from my aunt. It allows us to use the meat from last year’s steer mixed with boiled eggs from our hens and onions from the garden.