Today mostly I’ll be making Cheese ……

Well as the title says yesterday (not today) I spent the day making cheese. I am so pleased I have finally found somewhere I can get raw milk from (which until my cows can have calves I really need) and I can get easily as much as I need…….so yesterday I got 40 litres (in fact a little bit more).

So I spent the day making cheese and put 25 litres of milk to what I think was good use.

In the end

Gouda ~ did one large one which I cut in half and 2 small ones – one I put cracked black pepper in (I had this made by a commercial company and really liked it)…altogether around 3kgs (6^1/2 lbs)of cheese

Had huge amounts of whey left so that was used 2 ways..

Ricotta ~ I would say about 1kg (2lbs)
…….and after that had been strained what was left went out to the pigs this morning….so nothing was wasted….I like that…a lot

~

I’ve still got 20 litres or so left so I’m thinking Mozzarella either today or tomorrow.

It’s been a bit of a revelation to rediscover just how fascinating milk is. Don’t get me wrong I think I’ve always though it was amazing because there are so many things you can do / make with milk but cheese making has given me a completely different appreciation of it all over again …..

Does that make me sound sad ?!!!…Oh gawd I sound like I have no life and now I find milk fascinating!!! Ahhh well  I’ll just go and sit quietly and rock in a corner LOL!!

Lily…our house cow

Well hopefully she will be our house cow in the next couple of years…..that’s the plan anyway. She is currently only 6 months old so she has a little way to go yet to actually achieve that status but you got to start somewhere haven’t you?

She is still very wee but she is also very cute. She was very skittish when we first got her (not surprisingly really as she had been in a field with a mob of calves and not handled much)…but feed pellets are a wonderful thing…and now amazingly she is extremely friendly after only a couple of weeks.

Lily is a Jersey x Friesian – although the Friesian seems to have got lost somewhere she is so small….she’ll do me just fine though and in a couple of years I won’t have to work out where to get raw milk from to make cheese because I will have it on my doorstep …happy..you bet I am….now we just need to halter train her so she walks nicely to get milked (obviously better to do it now while she’s little)….so onto hubby now to make a halter for her.