Our New Little Milker.

Introducing the newest addition to our homestead! Our New milk cow, Abigail, is a small jersey. She is still young( even though she has had one calf), and we are in the process of really getting her gentled down and trained to come in when she is called for milking. Dustin built her a milking stantion under the side shed on our old barn and she also has a nice, roomy stall to call her own :-) .

View from above.

Milking away. A nice, stainless steel bucket is a must. You can use plastic, but it is much harder to keep really clean, and aluminum and other metals can actually give the milk a bad taste. www.lehmans.com Is one place that carries them (Search "stainless steel milk pail").

Here is Abigail's bell. She wears it when she is out to pasture. It is really handy because she is not fully trained to come when she's called yet, and if she is up in the woods, it's nice to be able to hear her when you go to find her.

 And, anyway, if you own a cow, and you own a cowbell, who could resist?

It feels so good to have loft full to the rafters with hay from our own land. Bring on the cold weather - there's plenty for the stock to eat!

So, one of the benefits of having our own cow has been making our own butter. Butter, especially organic or natural options, is so expensive these days. And with the studies that have been done now show how bad margarine is for you, it's been nice to have a steady supply from an animal who's food source we know.

The girls have gotten a kick out of helping shake cream!

Daddy shows her how.

Ember, you little ham!

You can tell the butter has nearly "come" from the way the cream looks sort of clumpy on the sides of the jar. Once it looks like this it just needs another minute or so before it's butter.

Oh, now, here's the butter! Look at that big lump floating in the buttermilk. Sometimes it is yellow like from the store, and sometimes its very pale like the batch above. The color doesn't affect the flavor. And speaking of flavor, it has been amazing! I have eaten homemade butter that had a strong flavor, but I think that must be from something with a strong flavor that the cow is finding to forage on. Anyway, this has been really tasty.

The butter needs all the buttermilk rinsed out. This seems easiest if you stick the whole jar in the fridge for a little while and let the butter harden a bit. Then when you rinse its not so easy to loose some of the soft butter down the sink.

Last, you salt the butter to taste. A little goes a long way!

*The wooden spatula is one that Dustin carved. Go to http://homemadehomeshoppe.etsy.com to see our current selection of  hand carved kitchen utensils.

Well, that's it for this post, but we look forward to making cheese as well ! - HMH.

A Day in the Blacksmith Shop.

Dustin recently had a commission for a reclaimed wood and iron-work coat tree. He spent most of a day in the shop with his little helper, Esther. They documented the project with step by step pictures. 

Above, you can see a bit of smoke drifting out of the eaves of the smithy.

Firing up the forge.

These next pictures show the top layer of hooks taking shape. The stock he is using is 1/4 X 3/4 flat bar. Above, he has just flattened the ends of the forged blanks in preparation for rolling them as you see below.

Putting the curve in. The metal is still red-hot.

Now the bottoms of the pieces have been rolled up into hooks.

A few views of the inside of the shop. Esther was having a ball!

Finished except for drilling the screw holes.

On to the small hooks for the lower tier.

These will be driven right into the wood, hence the sharp ends.

Nicely curved.

Finished.

Now Dustin drills the pilot holes in the large hooks. ( P.S. Esther took these photos! :-) )

Daddy and his girl!

The drilling was done with an old fashioned hand drill.

The horses ambled over for a visit so Esther took a quick break to do a little petting. 

...and a little hugging :-) .

After drilling the pilot holes with the hand drill he finishes the holes with the drill press.

 

A view of the drill press.

Here all all the hooks with the reclaimed wood that the body of the coat tree will be made of.

The foot of the stand is designed to be hard to topple over, as the tree was destined to be in a shop holding merchandise. The lady didn't want it falling over on customers!

 

It turned out so pretty! It has a real nice rustic/western vibe. Below are some pictures of the completed project, ready to be delivered to it's new home.

To order similar pieces, call us at 1-870-283-4002 . Thanks for reading! H.M.H. :-)

Fun at the Farmer's Market.

We recently enjoyed setting up at a local farmer's market. Our garden isn't producing enough to sell quite yet, but we brought baked goods and a small selection of wood and metal work. Dustin also demonstrated how he carves wooden spoons all morning.

There were quite a few other vendors selling fresh veggies, herbs, home made soaps, farm fresh eggs and more . A lot of farmers were sold out by 10:30 am .

Janet baked mini loaves of whole wheat bread and oatmeal cookies the night before. Both turned out to be popular items at the market.:-)

Dustin carving with some interested onlookers. People always love to watch him working.

We love how this spoon just looks like it is bursting out of the wood! We actually had people waiting for him to finish this one so they could take it home :-) .

Here is Dustin just finishing putting his sign on the back of the spoon.

And here is little Conagher Quinn! He is a wonderful little boy and he slept most of the morning. We are all enjoying having a little brother in the family. 

Happy big sisters.

We are looking forword to coming back to this one!