Work & Play & Clean

Busy Tuesday is currently underway.  Just finished doing a whole bunch of stuff I've been meaning to do.  Laundry, dishes, clearing my computer's hard-drive of unwanted crap and even firing up my new cordless drill to hang some stuff around the house.  But that's not all!

Who let that creep into the creamery?

I was in the dairy this morning at 7 to hang chevre, like you see above.  After the milk is pasteurized, we pump it into a 40 gallon vat (which is super-fucking-clean) and then add culture and rennet and let it sit overnight without being disturbed.  In the morning, it's chevre!  Easy!  The curd is then scooped out of the vat and poured into a cheese-cloth bag.  The whey is expelled through the bag caught in buckets to be fed to the chickens.

Farmhouse cheese was also pressed this morning.  I hung it up last night and today I weighed it out, salted it and pressed it into wheels.  I also salted the Camembert to prepare it for aging (the salt stops the culturing process of the cheese, and keeps the pH from dropping for reasons I don't understand--note to self: learn the chemistry).

On the left, Farmhouse cheese being pressed in the Tillamook buckets and chevre hanging on the right, whey buckets below everything.

Jan and I switched places this morning, so while I did all that in the dairy (and more, lots and lots of cleaning), she milked the goats.  Usually it's the other way around, but things are changes around here.  And change is good.  After working for 4 hours and cleaning up the milking parlor for Jan, I was all done for the morning.  Jan invited me in for coffee and I made myself some toast and eggs and coffee.  I chatted and ate with Jan and her friend Bernie.  They are a couple of funny gals.

Now that's what I call Ultra-Violet

After lunch Roscoe and I took a lovely hike at one of our favorite spots.  I used to love it for the big, glorious Oak tree at the top of the second big hill you encounter, but today this hike displayed an even more magnificent attraction--camas (thank LD for the plant i.d.).  Fields and fields of camas are what you find when you pull onto this particular logging road, while appears long since abandoned.  

Like all of the Willamette valley, there was plenty of invasive scotch broom to be seen today, and while I know it's evil, it sure did smell nice!  Roscoe and I both got nice and tired from the hike and are finally slobbing around the house.  But not for long, gonna rush back to the farm in just a few hours to milk again.  Hoping to get a couple casts into the river in before that, if I have the energy...