Just another Day on the Farm

We went from bitter, bitter cold to record breaking high temps in under a week..

It feels like spring between the melting and the fog that is rolling across the farm.. I did some yard work this morning, shaking my head at the amazing warm temps, on the other hand, the snow is melting and filling the auto pasture water bin, and wow does it ever free up time during the day when you don’t need to haul water.

It seems like this back and forth weather is happening all over N.A.  thankfully right now, that its been short enough that we don’t need to worry about it effecting the tree’s etc. I feel the need to let the birds out and retouch up their crops with their pick of tiny rocks if they so desire.

Knickers had a lovely set of healthy twins born this morning, could not have picked a better day to have wee ones, its plus in the numbers and melting.. Now to get the rest of the day into higher gear.. so while I will work to find time to write a post later today.. for now.. lamb cuteness will have to do :P.. (Farmer T’s  Miss M was able to come over and watch the second lamb be born, so she got to name the lambs) she named the oldest Scruffy and the one she got to watch be born is Butterfingers.. so here is butterfingers on her first very wobbly standup 🙂

One of these little tikes (just one day old at the moment) is to be my new boar when he grows up..

Turns out that I made a basic lactic Sheep Cheese.. and I even followed the basic’s without really knowing what I was doing it, right down to not pressing the cheese. What is even more funny to me, is that they show photos of this cheese rolled in herbs..   It would appear that the lactic naturally working in the raw aged milk was able to overrule the added yogurt culture that I added.

http://www.cheesemaking.com/LacticChz.html

Lactic cheese or Acid Set cheese differs from the firmer rennet set cheeses in that they rely primarily on the activity of the bacteria converting lactose to lactic acid causing the proteins to cling together and thus form a curd.

The milk will take much longer to coagulate for a lactic cheese at 16-24 hours and at a much higher acid level of.4-.5% (pH 4.8-5.0) then the rennet set cheese which only requires 10-30 minutes and very low acid levels of .17-.15% (pH 6.5-6.6).

The lactic cheese will result in a weaker curd because the higher acid causes much of the calcium that normally forms firm cheese bonds to run off with the draining whey. As a result only small cheeses can be made and spontaneous drainage is the only means of removing moisture. No pressing can be used for these cheeses.

I don’t know what to call this cheese.. but it sure is good..

http://nowornever-debbie.blogspot.ca/2013/01/21-cat-portrait.html

A while back a lovely artist asked for some photos of farm animals to be sent for her to do some paintings on, so far she has done two, one of the sheep in the mist and one of our darlin Miss Freckles.. Full copyright to the artist, her links is in the post, if you like her style do go check out her other paintings..

Ok, so I had some older sheep milk that needed to be used up, this was whole raw sheep milk that ranged in age between six to three days old, it had lovely layers of fresh cream on top, it smelled good and looked normal, I wanted to make 2 quarts of homemade yogurt, I cleaned the jar well, warmed my milk to the correct temp, adding in the starting culture of lovely thick yogurt for the culture and I wrapped the jar with a towel and put it into the deyhrator at the correctly marked temp for yogurt making and left if for its required time per the booklet, when I went back much later that day, was I in for a suprise..

Instead of thick yogurt, I had a bubbling mass of quark like cheese on top of a big old pile of whey..  It was not clabber, it was the start of cheese, and I have never seen it bubble like that, did it get crossed over with some bread making yeast, but the book says that if that happens then it will smell bad and the taste will be off still what the ???

It had a slightly sour smell to it, not bad, but not yogurt either and I could have just strained it right then for a soft farmers creamed cheese but I was not happy about this I hit the books and after reading some,  I thought, ok, I will heat it and make cottage cheese..

Wrong again, I did the heating and it did form cheese, a lovely cheese in fact but it was closer to mozza then cottage cheese, I finally drained it and it rolled into a ball and was darn close to stretchable, and I worked it a bit to get some salt into it and then rolled it into a log, rolled the log in fine herbs and wrapped it and into the fridge..

O my, when I cut into it this morning, it was awesome!, I mean amazing, I had a lovely firm white cheese, with a richness of taste, there is some lovely flavour to this cheese, its like a flavourful aged cheese, when it had not aged (well the milk was a bit more aged then normal) It was excellent, and Dh said after eating it, figure out how to make it again..

I can’t even figure out what kind of cheese it would count as let alone know if I can make it again.. it was cultured milk in the sense I added the yogurt to it, but I used nothing else other then time and heat to make the cheese itself..

I will post photos once the battery is recharged..