Butter? Well a dob....

Well, we are supposed to be getting lots of cream out of the milk which we get from Elise, only we aren't. 

We thought that it might be the problem of the cream separator bit of kit, which we purchased recently from the Ukraine, but it isn't.

Apparently, the best cream sits in the last dribbles of milk from the emptying udder

and since Lester is only managing to get a quart of milk from her at the moment, 

and that is the first milk out of the udder,

then Bonny, her calf, is getting the cream, and the majority of the milk.

Now that's alright,

after all, we are new to the art of harvesting milk from a cow, and we are not yet set up in terms of proper milking facilities, seeing as how Bonny arrived unexpectedly, so we were not prepped to start milking.

A quart, therefore, is enough to be going on with per day.

But it is an expensive quart, because food has to be traded for that harvest of milk.

What I mean is, that Elise has to be given a bucket of grain to divert her attention away from what Lester is doing with her udders.

And she eats fast, does Elise, too fast for Lester to get much more than a litre of milk from her. 

Now the goats give us two litres of milk per day, and they are nowhere near as expensive to feed. So, what to do.....

We think that we shall have to separate Bonny away from from her mum soon, 

that we urgently need to sort out proper milking equipment,

as in milking machine to speed things up at the udder,

and a proper feeding trough to which Elise can be haltered. 

But Lester has a milking stool (see last blog), which is start.

So in the kitchen, the cream separator is not really an item I have found of much use,

although might be if we were getting up to two gallons of milk at each milking,

and what I have done, is spoon off the small layer of cream which drifts up to the top of the milk during the course of a couple of days, and this I did this morning...

And I played...

...et voila!

..uno nobbo of beurre!!!

Well, it's a start, 

and we had DIY bread, with DIY goats cheese with DIY butter sandwiched in between.

Message to self: do not randomly scatter salt into food straight from the tub, but remember to put the salt crystals into the palm of your hand first. This will help you judge exactly the right amount of salt, and stop the 'hit or miss' effect that upending the tub of salt over the food tends to produce. You got away with it this time, because you were able to wash the extra salt out of the newly made butter, but to be careful in the future.