The weather… it's a changing.

Posted by Rich | Posted in Cattle, Cheese, Friends & Family, Weather | Posted on 07-03-2010

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It is finally starting to feel like spring around here.  The weather is reaching it’s normal high temps. of 30ºF and beyond.  The creek that runs through the farm has opened up.  And best of all, we haven’t had frozen water pipes in the house for close to a week.  Just a week ago we still had 17″ of snow and now we have about 8″ of the stuff.  The bad part of it all is that the mud is showing up.

In the barn, I installed a small flood light for the outdoor goat & sheep pen (east of the barn).  Now when we want to do a late night baby-check, it will be much easier to do.  Small things can make so much easier.

This morning and tonight, I’ve been helping the neighbors with milking chores  Tonight, Madison went with to help feed baby calves.  While observing some larger cattle she noticed one heifer laying down.  The heifer was in labor and Madison knew it… she kept a good eye in the animal.  When chore was finished, the calf was yet to be born.  We scooted the heifer into the barn for safety sake.  About 9:15, I got a call fro the neighbor – the calf needed to be pulled.  Madison came with.  We put the chains on the calf’s legs and the neighbor and I pulled.  After only 5 minutes of hard pulling a new calf was born.  It was huge.  Since the mother was in the stall we carried the calf to where it’s mother could lick it dry.  This Holstein calf must have weighed 80+ lbs.  It was so much bigger than the normal sized calf that was born last week.  I will be helping with chores Sunday at 5am and then again at 5 pm.

Oh yeah… I nearly forgot.   Carol made approx. 2 lbs of Mozzarella cheese from our farm’s goat milk.  Carol has had some minor problems with some of the Mozzarella recipes out there.  She decided to heat the salt brine water a few degrees warmer and the cheese turned out so much better – it stretched better than it ever has.  It turns out that in some cases, goat cheese needs to be heated at least 2ºF warmer than cow milk (unless the recipe specifies goat milk).

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