A warm Hello, the days continue to be hot and humid, thankful for the ac. We are out early, about 7am and in by 11 am until about 7pm. I and grandson get to the barn as the sun is rising enough yet not over the top of the tree line, it is pleasant enough for us and the cows for milking. In the last post I mentioned our last mama cow was close to calving, and she did just, a bull calf. Her bag has been going bad for a few years and is almost non functioning now, so we are bottle feeding her calf. Though her bag is bad and we feel by next calving she won't have anything, we have opted to keep her and let her continue to have calves, and we will just bottle feed them. She is 11 and we have had her since she was 2 weeks old, so she is more of a pet as well. I always save the colostrum from Elsie each time she calves, so I have a supply to give a new born. When the times comes that this old mama cow will have issues calving, that will be a different decision. Such as they do come in homesteading.
With our milk supply I am making cottage cheese, butter, and round cheese. I also make 'cream fresh' which is a wonderful product to make smoothies, baking and make the fluffiest scrambled eggs. I strain a portion of fresh milk, right from milking, into a 1/2 gallon jar with about a fourth of buttermilk in it, leave it in the cupboard 24 hours, it will thicken, then place in frig. When you are ready to make more, use a portion of what cream fresh you have to begin another batch. It is not thicker than yogurt, but thicker than buttermilk. We have used it as sour cream on tacos. When it is as hot as it is, we do not drink as much milk, so the chickens, cats and grandson's pet pig are getting daily treats of the excess.
Addiemae continues to do well. We are getting a routine laid for her daily care. We press on each day to do what we can to catch up on the work of the farm that 2 months time spent away has accumulated. We are making progress.
The blueberries are just about over, we picked about 15 gals., the most we have ever gotten. For now I have frozen them, waiting for winter when I will make jelly, juice and can for baking. From our small fresh eating garden, which I call FEG for short, we have gotten a good amount of tomatoes, squash, banana and bell peppers of which I have made a soup and added rice or noodles and canned.
I have a camp fire area I enjoy to utilize for heating water, reheating leftovers and cooking so I do not have to use the summer kitchen and gas stove. I do not use it every day, though I would like too. It takes a bit of planning to incorporate it into our schedule. There are many things I would like to do daily in a more 'primitive' way, for a lack of a better word. I would not say simpler, for the work one does on a homestead is just that........ work. As I can I do. This is what I would encourage anyone to do. Everyone's life is different, keeping that in mind, find what does work for you, maybe on a day to day, or if it doesn't, find how it will work from time to time. Incorporate when and where you can.
Homesteading to me, in a general use or term, is providing what you can for yourself, where and how you can. Not everyone will have animals, large garden, 100's of chickens, be able to sell or make a living from their homestead; but there may be a farmer's market, some plain community of sorts around, that sell lots of produce, products you can not provide. No one can do everything. A major thought is to not compare yourselves to ones you see on you tube or even in their blogs, and I am included. I think a lot of the you tubers, when they first start out, do want to help and share their journey of how they got into homesteading, but after a little bit, and it does not take much, with all the praise, glory, and over board comments they receive, I believe they lose their true vision and it is all about, ' hey, look at me.' And if they receive any negative comments, oh heaven forbid they do, they delete them. You tube is another glorying in oneself and is Facebook, and yes, a blog can be too, so it is imperative to keep the perspective of what the goal is. I am not on FB nor you tube and have grown weary of the you tubers out there. I wonder what the true, old timer homesteader would think of the new you tuber homesteaders.? One you tuber uses the word 'homestead homie'. Just what does that mean? Another new term is 'bush crafting', which is only another way to say, 'necessity is the mother of invention."
Maybe the tone of this last portion of my post is a bit negative; I do not mean for it to be that, but just thought provoking to deep pondering.
I am going to share a few pictures of around our homestead in the next post, which I hope will be today or next. I am looking at the 'how' to do it. These pictures are of a few years ago and some from early this spring.
In Joy
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