the land of milk and honey

i just had a peanut butter and honey sandwich with a huge glass of milk. was it our milk and honey? YES, i love our honey and this was the first glass of the newly freshened rory. it was buttery and delicious. rosemoon, tabitha's stance on how soon to drink a fresh cows milk is as soon as possible. we couldn't make colostrum custard because we used tomorrow® teat infusions to prevent mastitis and that requires 72 hours wait. i must say that i couldn't wait an entire week with no other raw milk source.

here is our milker. we got three gallons yesterday. i look to see a bit more than that once rory settles in.


we got to pick the rest of the apples from my father-in-laws apple tree. so far we have only picked five buckets full. there are still three buckets still on the porch waiting for us this weekend.

today we canned twenty three or so quarts. my job was to operate the peeler-corer-slicer. i remember using one as a kid. it makes short work of a tedious job. tabitha filled the jars, ran the stove and canner.


toly helped. his job was to take a bite out of each apple and hand it to me. we are big on quality control around here.


this was tabitha's station. see the show canner? it holds fifteen quart jars and sits over two burners. it heats up pretty fast--so did the kitchen.


these canned apples look so tasty.


stack/split wood 1/2 a rick
move bees 2 hives
can a mess of apples 23 quarts
fix milker switches
move baby sling hook at barn
fix drain by bees
- - bees still in the way
get hay 16 bales
straw, water, jocelyn pen
- - tomorrow
fork waste hay by feeder into compost
- - need new pitch fork old one is broken
mow & feed grass to cows