Annie's heifer lost her first calf. It was dissapointing. She was on schedule. Not sure if it was born dead, or if something happened while we were giving a tour, handling cheese or fixing fence. Dave and I brought the heifer back into the barn. Her udder isn't much. An Ayrshire. Dave will try to milk her tonight.
Musketeer's heifer had a bull calf yesterday about 1:20 pm. A funny market fellow. He is out of a Scandanavian Red bull. We are trying to work on fertility and components in the dairy herd without loosing production. Dave figures he'll keep this bull calf to raise for a herd bull next year. He isn't taking to bottle to fast, but that happens with dairy bull calves sometimes.
Dave brought the Hesston 530 baler and Grimm teddar to Devon Lane (Belchertown, MA) yesterday. Well, actually he came back yesterday. I milked at Bruce's Wednesday eve so he could go to an insurance training session. I then milked our cows while Dave drove everything back in the Kirby trailer. He made it. The next morning Ken drove with Dave to Belchertown to drop the baler off. Irony is that Massachusetts has driven real agriculture out of business and suburbia is expanding so fast, yet we can make more money on our used equipment in MA than if we tried to sell it here in NY... I dunno. Dave then drove back. We loaded up the two bales for rent of the trailer and brought them back to Lisa. I made cheese last night.
Cheese. I was up to about 12:30pm making Gouda. Good yield last night. I was sleep walking during the last turning. Had to straighten one 2# wheel out and the baby's didn't press as well as expected. Have to get a small scale to weigh each baby to make it more standard. One big one and the little ones around it don't get fully pressed. pH dropped a wee lower on those baby's that didn't press overnight becuase I had to add more weight to it and let it sit for a part of the day to get it to nit nicely. It worked. Brined then and now they are sitting in the drying room to be waxed.
Will have Donna out to do a cheese class in June. That will be nice. I like to have the input from all cheesemakers. Elmond doesn't see the point, but I guess that is the difference between wanting to learn how to make great cheeses and wanting to make what you think is a good cheese. I'm not the industrial sort. Maybe there is a happy medium. I think about things too much.
Got the Ta set from Margaret. I'll be switching to that. $137 for a Ta or get a proper pH for $300+. I erred with Ta. Besides Patrick and Kathy Biss both figured that the Ta was a better measure of what is happening with your cheese.
We got our whey management system today. Tim dropped off two Hampshire/Yorkshire cross pigglets today. He was meeting with Jay Graham and family. We all thought it was a good time to drop off the piggies. They are small. We had the,m in the pen with Kiwi and the two kids (hers and Heather's fall kid). Kiwi wasn't overly nice to them. Had to move Kiwi and group down to the pole barn/paddock. They will move to the pig pen at above the manure pit for a bit (they are crazy small now). Dave will try to work on it over the forcasted 4-days of rain.
Never got the fence completed. Cannot find the charger from the sheep/goat management area. That and Dave had another "attack". He goes under the knife on May 5th. He figures I cannot do things, so is frantic to finish EVERYTHING before the surgery. He is a bit of a jerk before surgeries. I'm use to it now, but it does ware on you. 2 1/2 weeks to go.
I shear the ewes and rams over the weekend. I want them at Green Rabbit farm by next weekend. Wormed, vaccianted and hooves trimmed and they are good to go. Good luck Green Rabbit. I hope the fences are on. Sheeps love mesculin mixes... I think they'll do a good job, I just hope they learn to judge the sheeps need for ample water/green grass before they learn the good old fashioned way...
We've made a deal with Claire to get 2 chickens this summer. She has to do some chores to earn money to feed the birds. She tried to get Grampy to make a chicken house for her. We'll see. She does have this odd ability to walk up to these birds and pick them up any time she wants to. They see me and run like heck in the yard. I can pick the eggs fair enough (without a peck), but catch them when they are free in the yard... that takes talent.
One more cow to go for a few more weeks. I think there are only a couple more before summer, but I think the bulk of them are fresh now.
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