Fresh Milk!

I know, I know,,,,I need to be posting pictures! Time is moving so fast. I barely have the time to fit in our Christmas/Holiday stories and crafts. I have a few pictures, but we are behind.

This week I have been doing some research on fresh, cow milk. Last spring we took a field trip to a local dairy, Lavy Dairy Farm, in Silex, MO. http://lavydairyfarm.com/ My friends started a group driving from the city to get the milk. For some reason I never jumped on the band wagon and I live right in town to get the milk (the others drive an hour~). Anyway, this week I decided we were going to give it a try and OH.MY.GOSH.....we drank a gallon of milk in only 3 days! That has NEVER happened in my house. Nico and I took the cream off the top of the milk and made butter. We had two gallons of milk and ended up with 1.5 cups of butter....YUMMMMY! We made some homemade bread to use our butter on. The next morning we used the buttermilk to make pancakes. I am loving it!

Last spring we raised meat hens for the first time. I wasn't sure I could do the butchering, but with the help of a friend, we mastered the task. I only had 10 chickens and sure wish I had more! We ate the last of our chicken breast last week and did a taste comparison with some frozen chicken breasts from the store. There is no comparison....I really wanted to throw the bag of frozen chicken away...but that is what we are left eating until next summer. I recently bought a larger pen to keep the chickens in next year as I am planning on having at least 30 of my own. I have gotten my friends and family from the city interested as well and they are going in on the feed and buying their own chickens to keep at my house. Then we will have a butchering party!

We also love our egg layers! I love going out each day to collect the eggs, counting them, seeing what sizes and colors we have gotten. Again, I have many of my city friends buying my eggs. My mom is a regular customer and has not gone back to eat store bought eggs since I started having enough to sell. The eggs we hatched last spring are laying now. We are looking forward to hatching more eggs this year!

I gotta wrap this post up as it is my break time at work....I will be back to tune it up some and will hopefully get pictures posted soon!