leche del amor

for those of you who don't know, we have a milk cow. tabitha milks her daily. we get about two gallons of milk per day. this milk is heavy with cream. we at the pile of o'melays drink a ridiculous amount of milk per day. breakfast farina made with milk instead of water, multiple peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches with milk, bowls of cereal and many random glasses of milk throughout the day and at meals. tabitha and i both use lots of cream in our morning coffee and have butter production is in full swing. tabitha also makes different cheeses, spreadable, grate-able and the really melty kind.
our neighbor gets a few gallons per week and there is still plenty to clabbor for the chickens. on top of all that there is usually three to four gallons in the refrigerator at any given moment.

the chickens are really slacking off right now. last winter they didn't hardly slow down and now we might get three eggs per day. i am tempted to put a incandescent light in their coop to keep them warmer and trick them a bit. although, i don't really like to artificially stimulate anything so i struggle with this concept. we'll probably ride out this lean time and let them naturally produce what they will.

merlin is weaned and living up at grandpas. he is fully integrated into the mini herd there. we'll let him grow for several more months and then it'll be merlin burgers around...

the meat chickens are a grand success. tabitha puts one in the king-sized crock-pot with veggies and spices and we have a couple of meals from it. we then make a two and a half gallon pot of chicken-noodle-soup from the remaining meat and carcass. this equates to several lunches for the kids and usually a dinner during the week. the kids love-love-love this chicken soup. it is filled with healthy veggies and spices from the garden.

the canned tomato sauce usually makes for a couple more meals weekly and we usually try to make "karl's famous tofu" at least once per week. we also try to weekly have a butternut squash or sweet potato with some of the pork that grandpa raised. ground beef from the local cattle butcher and tacos from that are a big hit. the garden still has some beets and swiss chard we'll see how things fare after the snow melts this week.

just a post to document our diet. it'll be interesting to read it later and see how things have changed--or not