November 2009 Farm Production

We started off the month in utter randomness. With Norman still in with Isabelle and Caroline, we never knew how much milk we'd get, nor from whom! Norman was an equal opportunity nurser, so sometimes we'd get milk from his mama Caroline if he'd been nursing off of Isabelle and sometimes we'd get the opposite. When our milk intake really started to drop off drastically, we decided that it was time to move Norman out to the big pasture with Isabelle as his nurse cow. We kept Caroline in the barnyard. The first morning after that, we found Norman had busted through the fence to get back with his mama, but the shock was memorable enough that he hasn't attempted that again. Isabelle and Norman do hang out just outside the gate, though. I believe Norman doesn't want to go far and Isabelle won't leave him behind.

At the same time, we moved big Burt to his own bull pen. We've also moved Lily and Belle into the barnyard as we believe they will both be calving before too long. Since the big moves, our milk production has been pretty consistent. And, in fact, we sold our first 2 gallons of raw milk! Quite a landmark occasion, considering that our goal is to be dairying full time some day.

Eggs collected: 162, or 13.5 dozen (about 5.4/day)

Milk collected: 973 cups, or 60.8 gallons (about 2 gallons/day)
Milk products made: 8 lbs each of mozzarella and ricotta, plus lots of yogurt, butter, and ice cream
Milk sold: 2 gallons

We are still getting red tomatoes because we pulled all the green ones off before the first frost and stuck them in paper bags in the basement. Every few days, more have ripened. While I am thankful for the continuing harvest, I'm getting a little sick of processing tomatoes. It's December, for crying out loud! I've made a lot of spaghetti sauce that we consumed immediately, so I won't include that in the numbers.

Produce preserved:

• 4 cups dried tomato powder
• 2 qts tomato sauce

We've also been able to dig into a few of the hard cheeses I made. In fact, I took a cheese plate of them to Thanksgiving dinner. They got rave reviews!