Farmer's Market

The weather cooperated, and I made it to the farmer's market. It is great to be able to get out and see other people! When you get snowed in on a farm, the cows, cats dogs and a 2 year old are just about all for conversation!

It wasn't the best day in the world for the market, I think if the sun would have peeked out some it would have improved. A Home and Garden show in a building next to us helped some!

Sadly, however, a lot of new customers just don't realize there are cheeses out there besides "Velveeta". Gives me an oppourtunity to educate a bit.

I do have to say that I think my regular customers, that miss me when the weather keeps me home, are great! I've been called the "cheese lady".

Little Miss Emily stayed home with daddy this morning. That seems to work out great! She loves helping him with the milking. (Her favorite spot is in the sawdust cart). She takes her shovels and dumptrucks to the barn to play in what she calls "haydust" (aka: sawdust or wood chips). We have 7 baby calves that are on bottles, and that is one of her favorite things to help with on Saturday mornings.

I made it home this afternoon, wanted nothing more than to sleep, but that never happens! ha!

We usually have the cheese house open on Saturday afternoons, but after a lot of thought and discussion we've decided to do away with the set hours. It seems that some weeks we have maybe 1 or 2 customers on Saturday afternoons. So, during that time I either stay at the cheese house (where it is cold in the winter, even with the heat turned up), or wait at the house, hope to see the car go up the hill, grab little Pumpkin (hope she isn't napping, or naked!) and get up the hill before the customer gets contrary.

So, we've decided to have customers give us a call and schedule a visit. That way I can have customers in here Monday-Saturday, and I have more control of what time. May make juggling 50 milk cows, a 2 year old, and all the other crazy stuff happening here, easier.

We are halfway through March, and have had almost a dozen cows have their babies in the past 2 weeks. And more are due anytime between now and April 1st. Busy! Mostly bull calves. Not as good as heifer calves. Bulls are pretty much useless on a dairy farm, unless we can keep one for a breeding bull. Don't like to have them around either, because they can get down right mean by the age of 2. Kinda like kids!!!

Our target date for cheese making is still (keeping fingers crossed) March 25th. If I don't have anymore dentist, dr., meetings scheduled. The calander on my refrigerator is getting full. I call that my brain, if I didn't write it all down, I'd be lost.

Other than all that, I'm done for the day.....except for getting bills paid, shutting down the cheese building, getting a little girl tucked into bed, dishes, laundry....LOL Never done around here!

Spring has to be soon...

I'm anxious for spring to show itself, soon. I did see the robins yesterday, as snow, ice and rain was falling, so the poor thing probably wondered why it came to Ohio already.

Thankfully today the snow is mostly melted, just enough out there for a little 2 year old to have some fun. She wanted to have a snowball fight, so we made some snowballs, but when I hit her boot (so lightly it wasn't even funny!), she pouted and said "That hurt!". But, proceeded to slam me pretty good for a little thing, with a big snowball.

I was pretty pleased to find on the web yesterday that one of our cheeses had a really good review by the food magazine called The Nibble.

You can look at that at:
http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/cheese/cheese2/whey/2008-02-gouda2.asp

We are the first Gouda listed, under Buckeye Grove Farm.

We are almost all set to start cheese making, hopefully March 25, and hopefully figure out what we're doing! I'm getting pretty anxious to start this challenge. Plus, our walk in cooler is getting very low on wheels of cheese, so time to get those shelves filled and start selling!

That's about all the happenings here on this lazy, cold Sunday. And thanks to the time change, it's been a real lazy day....

Snow Day!

The weather called for maybe an inch....hmmm...it looks like we have about 3-4 inches so far and it's still coming down. Looks nice, especially since I don't have to get in our van and go anywhere.

I need to bundle Miss Emily up and make our way up the hill to the cheese house and get some stuff that I need at the house. Since our van won't make the hill climb, we'll walk, slide or just mosey. Her wooden sled should come in handy to carry the stuff, hope the sled doesn't get away from me since on the way down the hill it will be carrying some expensive glass. A Lactometer, glass bottles, pipettes and some other misc. stuff. All for running tests on our milk samples that we took this morning. We do this once a month. Also check to see how much milk each cow is approx. giving us.

I've been working on getting a brochure made up to send in to the American Jersey Cattle Assoc. Still can't seem to get it right. Will try to get that accomplished today.

Was planning on going to the farmer's market tomorrow in Marietta Ohio to sell some cheese, but it looks like the weather will be keeping me home. It takes me just over an hour to get there, and I don't like to get their by sliding.

So, thanks to the snow, it's going to be a slow, lazy (sort of) day.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog.
I thought I would put this together since I have nothing else to do!
Actually, I seem to keep pretty busy. My husband and I have a dairy farm where we milk around 50 Jersey cows. I say around 50. Right now we are milking 29, it's winter, and we dry our cows off about 2 months before they have their babies, so they are not milking. Next month, I guess next month starts this Saturday, will be our busy month, we have almost 20 +/- cows due to calve (have their babies).

Also starting mid to late March we will start our newest challenge in making cheese. We made a few batches last August through October, but it was under the instruction of my mother-in-law. We did make two batches solo at the end of October, but thanks to my handy cell phone my mother-in-law was able to help us out.

We have a daughter, Emily, who will be 3 this coming May. She is full of energy, and keeps me busy enough without all the other stuff!

I cook and bake, a lot. That is why I find it necessary to have 100+ cookbooks. My favorites would have to be my Gooseberry Patch Cookbooks. I have a few that actually used recipes that I submitted.

Other than all that, it stays pretty laid back around here..... ;)