Milk
Posted by Farmgirl Y on Sunday, July 11th, 2010
We’ve dried off Popcicle, since she went down to about a quart a day. So now she will have a good three months to rest and build up her stores before calving in early October. The rest should do me good too, as I was developing carpal tunnel from milking. I may need to get a machine in the fall when they both freshen.
We started buying store milk, and what a pale, insipid comparison to our rich Popcicle milk! And it’s even non-homogenized, local, supposedly grazing Jersey milk (though pasteurized for sale, of course). They must standardize it to 4%, and Popcicle was tested at 5% butterfat so that’s a pretty big difference.
Egads. They say keeping a cow really changes your life, and it truly did mine. I now have a bona fide cow addiction, and am jonesing for another one so I can get my real milk fix RIGHT NOW. It is totally worth being tied to the farm and milking duties. I may never have another vacation away from the farm for more than 12 hours, but I’ll be happy and healthy, dagnabbit!
Lily is doing well, finally mostly healed from her bang up in the stock trailer that took her to me from the auction. She had a nasty oozing stinky mess above her rear hoof (which was also cracked) which made her lame for weeks, then she got ringworm after the vet gave her an antibiotic for the infection, but is now prancing around like her old self.
Filed in Animal | 5 responses so far
Aubinon 13 Jul 2010 at 5:05 pm 1Eh, who needs travel? When you have milk cows, you stay-cation. Or not. More likely you work every day as their faithful servant, unless by some freak of chance you find friends or have family who will attend to them while you’re gone, in which case you probably worry about them the whole time. I haven’t been away from home for more than 12 hours for 2 years now.
Youngieeon 15 Jul 2010 at 4:38 pm 2lol. I think that’s why I live in popular tourist destinations–that way, people can just come to me.
Aubinon 17 Jul 2010 at 7:09 pm 3Hey, I never thought of it that way. What are those people whining about? Why should we go through the hassle of trying to arrange for substitute care for all our livestock to take time to go see them in those nasty, over-populated, boring places, when they can come here to see us instead and be close to the many attractions of the Sierra foothills as a bonus?
Youngieeon 19 Jul 2010 at 12:15 pm 4If I weren’t so adverse to strangers visiting, I would set up a wall tent B&B like Mary Jane Butters has on her farm. Loads of people willing to spend a pretty penny on “roughing it”!
Aubinon 23 Jul 2010 at 1:53 am 5That would be sweet to have for family and friends, but yeah, I’m not so keen on strangers either.