Making Cheese

One thing about having a milking cow is you need a method to store the milk when you have an over abundance.

This is why our ancestors created cheese

Raw milk cheese is some of the most delicious variety, it has many “flavor notes’ and is a composite of deliciousness.

Here’s or first farmhouse cheddar so we’re hoping it’s going to be a good one, this one took about 2 gallons of milk and should be ready to eat in about 4 to 6 weeks.

Extract water from curd
Cheese press
Drying ..takes 4 days
Protective netting

Milk flows once more

It’s been many years since we’ve milked a cow, the days of raw milk cheeses, butter, yogurt, raw milk, sour cream..etc are back.

We were steered to China Maine by Maine Organic Farmers Association and purchased a beautiful cow named Gwen from Two Loons Farm.

Gwen had her calf about five days ago and we named her “Butters”. Gwen and calf are doing great and hanging out together.

Milking Gwen was difficult the first time because she was not used to our arrangement and we needed to come up with a solution that was safe for both Gwen and us.

Searching for an economically sound milking stand we decided to try something we found online, we ended up making modifications to make the stand stronger and more worker friendly, we’ll have to make more mods on it as we go along but this fits our needs right now, costed about $150 in lumber and approximately $ 135 in hardware.

Here’s Gwen getting milked.