Happy 3rd Birthday, Emily!

Spring is beautiful!

It snowed on April 29th!!! I don't remember snow that late in the season in a long time!

We are making some cheese!

It's been busy busy busy here! We started making cheese early April. Trying to make one batch a week, this past week we did two. Seems like a marathon race!
Long days. Our inventory is low from the winter sales. The cheeses we have made so far won't be ready until August and November (and some later). So, some of our stores may have to wait until later to order those types.

The farmer's market has been going well. I go to one right now, but have three more that are asking about our product being sold at theirs also. Feels like I'm being stretched a bit.

Emily will be 3 next week. That doesn't seem possible! We went through 2 pretty smooth, not too many tantrums. I've noticed the closer to 3 we get, I'm sure we may have the terrible 3's instead of 2's! Overall though, she's great. Loves to play on her own and amuse herself, which is great considering what we do each day as far as work goes.

I have a open day tomorrow, nothing is on my calendar that I have on our refrigerator. I don't know how to act! It's been awhile since I have had nothing planned. Cleaning house will probably be the plan for the day, though.

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....