Milking Stool Making

Joe Brien took us in-hand, in using hand-tools to make a handy milking stool.

This is a draw shave used by pulling towards yourself and with the grain of the wood.

By clamping the pre-cut stool seat in a neat gizmo called a shave horse. It's a foot operated clamp.
Another way to hold your stool seat.
Smoothing the edges.
Using piece of wood, a nail and a pencil to figure out where to drill holes for the legs. A little decoration.
A hand operated drill press.

Tapering the ends of the legs.


Marking where wedges will go.

Making splits for the wedges to go into.

Putting glue on the wedge.Setting the wedge.

Sawing off the extra leg length.
Planing the top smooth.
How long do you want your legs?
All hard at work.


All done now!!

Applly Ever After

Hmm... what can we do with apples? Lets find out shall we?
Debra told us that to make good cider you need a good blend of different types of apples or else "it turns out really REALLY yicky.We made some last weeks with only red delicious and it is awful!" Then we put the apples into a stainless steel sink and filled it up with water and added a dash of hydrogen peroxide.After getting the apples well rinsed and sorted (if less then half rotten it's still good), we cranked up the cider press.




After pressing a good amount of cider Debra brought out three different vinegars that she had made for us to smell. One was made by just taking cider, putting it in a glass jar, putting the lid on tight and putting it in the cupboard(quart jar). Another was cider that had had a little Braggs(a natural organic cider vinegar) added to it(small roundish jar). The third was made by soaking the pomace and then using the water(large square jar). We took some of the pomace and put it in a pot with water to cook until it was soft.
Then we ran it through a food mill(brand name Roma)to make apple sauce, which we poured into a pot and added sugar,cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. And put it on the stove to cook into apple butter.
Debra showed us and let us taste dried apple rings that she had made by coring, slicing and drying in a food dehydrator. Apple leather made by chopping up and coring apples then with a little bit cider putting a few chunks at a time into a blender and blending them in to mush.And last but not least apple heads for witch dolls

Keeping A Family Cow

The Local Farm barn became a class room for a hands-on workshop on handling, milking and using the milk. Meeting, greeting and a brief word about the paraphernalia to be taken home at the end of the day by Debra Tyler our guide to cowdom. We brought Stormy a miniature jersey into the milking stable. Debra told us that "where you milk your cow should be a place where you are comfortable, relaxed and like to spend time". Letting down milk is part of the parasympathetic nervous system so a cow needs to be relaxed to let down her milk. Beginning by brushing Stormy and then washing her udder with warm water and a gentle dish detergent. " A cow has four quarters, four glands, four teats and ONE udder". So if one quarter is bruised or inflamed you can feed the milk from that quarter to your chickens or your pigs and still use the milk from the other three for yourself. Learning to milk followed. Make a tight ring with your thumb and first finger at the top of the teat. Then roll your other fingers down. Do NOT let milk flow backward up into the quarter. Another way of milking is to slide your thumb down.

After everyone had a chance to try milking, Debra brought out the milking machine and finished milking Stormy out. This took only a few minutes and someone asked, "wouldn't it be easier to just have a machine?" Debra answered, "once you get good at milking by hand it takes about twenty minutes to milk out your cow. It takes twenty minutes to wash the milking machine. You choose, twenty minutes under your cow or twenty minutes at the sink washing MOORE dishes".
The milk was poured through a milk strainer. Some people will fold a filter disk and put it in a funnel and pour the milk through the funnel into their bottles, others put a clean dish towel over a wide mouth jar with a rubber band around the outside and strain the milk that way.
We took a little bit of the fresh warm milk (milk comes out of the cow at about one hundred degrees F the perfect temperature for making cheese and yogurt) poured it into a quart glass jar and added about two tablespoons of yogurt mixed it up and then filled the jar the rest of the way with the warm milk. It then needs to be kept warm over night. An oven with a pilot light works well. Debra says "this particular batch has been going for over two years now. When I have to start a new culture Dannon yogurt works the best."
To the rest of the warm milk we added one half of a rennet tablet dissolved in a quarter cup of COLD water. Rennet is an enzyme found in the lining of a new born calf's stomach. Debra gets her rennet from New England Cheesemaking Supply company http://www.cheesemaking.com/. Then we put the bucket in a styrofoam cooler filled with warm water. Next Debra brought out a bucket of milk that had been sitting out at room temperature for two days so the cream had risen to the top and gone slightly sour. To skim the cream off the top we used a cup by pushing the bottom of the cup down and letting the cream slip over the edge. Not scooping out the cream just letting it slip over the edge.
When the skim milk begins to show through the cream when you lift your cup out it looks like blue swirls. Then we poured the cream into an old fashioned daisy butter churn and cranked it as fast as possible trading off when the cranker got tired. As the cream is agitated the fat globules bump in to each other and latch on to one another and get bigger and bigger until you have butter!
At first it just looks like milk, then it seems to get bigger and splashes up and sticks to the sides of the jar, it goes through a whipped cream stage then gets grainy and finally turns to butter! Be careful because if it's a hot day and you keep cranking after it has buttered, the butter will be beaten back into cream. While someone was cranking the butter we took the skim milk left over from skimming the cream to make the butter and put it on a hot plate to heat. When it was just scalding, bubbling around the edges and steaming a little, we added apple cider vinegar until it turned to a soft cheese.


Ice cream...need I say more? Debra brought a custardy thing that she had prepared the night before. Scald 3 cups whole milk over low heat. Stir in 1 1/2 cups sugar an 1/4 tsp. salt. Slowly pour the milk over 4-6 beaten egg yolks. Beat until well blended. Stir and cook in a double-boiler over hot water until thick and smooth. Chill. Fold in 2tsp vanilla.We
skimmed four cups of cream and poured the custardy thing and the cream into the canister. Then put the canister in the freezer and layered ice and rock salt around the outside.
The ice needs heat to melt and it draws it from the mixture in the canister, the salt speeds the process. Cranking at about 1 crank a second turns the dasher and beats air into the ice cream. When it gets stiff, crank like crazy for 1 minute, then let it sit for 1/2 hour. Serve and enjoy!At lunch time Debra brought out the renneted milk that had solidified into a curd. Then she cut the curd so it would separate into curds and whey.
We ate a luscious lunch and had a wonderful time!