Butter is better

As Ryan said yesterday I am pretty exited about something, namely the making of butter. For a while now I have been getting milk from our local organic dairy, skimming the cream off the top and making butter. Now I am getting ready to upscale. The owner of the dairy is willing to give me milk for free if I can provide butter for them and us. They have a big old hand cranked milk separator that they found at an antique sale, which will have to be cleaned up but I think it should work fine. It separates using centrifugal force and apparently goes like the clappers once you get it whirring. And now I am looking around for a churn. I'm thinking electric, 8 litres and like everything round here not too expensive. Our friend Pete is dreaming up a bicycle powered device with multiple attachment options that I really like the sound of but until then I think we need something more conventional. Not that there is really anything conventional in the home butter churn, not many people doing it. But I will be producing the best butter in the world. It will also be good to be more involved with the dairy and maybe even learn a thing or two about cows, milking etc, for when our girls come on line. I am looking forward to experimenting and perfecting the art of butter making. Hopefully it will become one of my special skills I can offer up to our community of like minded, food producing friends that for the time being I refer to as PLAGGA Produce.
Next step cheese.

Tonight I was grateful that I was eating Brian's beautiful, grass fed, local, beef. Very tender and delicious, cooked rare and full of nutrients. Best meat I've had over here.



Noah was grateful that
"we dug some holes for those poles"

Dairy goes up

Progress report from the dairy. Things have started to move up a gear with the dairy building. All the doors and window frames have gone in, the electrics and some of the plumbing has been installed, and now the weatherboard is going back up. We have painted it and although it looks a bit messy (it had been sitting around for a while and got dirty), it will be cleaned off and given a second coat of paint. We kept the original small dairy doors at the back. Although they serve no purpose and can't be opened we thought they were a really sweet, original feature and that it's good to keep some history and show that the building was once a working dairy.



South side; back



The shower base has gone in and we got our 'Nature Loo' composting toilet in the mail a while ago and that too will go in as soon as we build some stairs and a platform for it.



Getting the cladding on has made the most dramatic difference to the space and we can really get a good feel of what the interior will look like. It is a very small space, but we have included lots big north facing windows to bring in the light and the veiw.



Ryan finished off the new chook house. We are leaving the goose house next door because we don't want to get geese until we have at least moved down to the dairy. I think Princess Rodericka is actualy Prince Roderick, so Roddy you might be for the pot.


So we put Roddy, Gladys and Paige in the new pen and left Johnny and Cantik in the chook tractor. Saddly a fox came a few nights ago and took Johnny and (my only egg layer), Cantik. Johnny had turned into a fine rooster, always looking out for his girls, in the cool way that roosters do. Finding a yummy morsel he would make a particular 'took' noise then stand back (maybe with a slight reverent bow) and allow his girls to gobble it up.

So Ryan has since enclosed the front of the chook house and made it predator proof and a little more weather proof as well.


Johnny and Cantik RIP. So long and thanks for all the eggs.


The slab for Ang and Ken's shed finally got poured today. After many weeks of 'it's too wet', 'there's not enough cracker dust' and just nothing at all, its finally done. So onward and upward with the shed, good stuff.