Milking machines

I went into our butcher on Tuesday to collect the calf's offal, liver, heart and tongue. For now we will put them onto the freezer. Our butcher was disappointed with the calf. He was far too lean and as a result he won't be able to hang him long. Maybe ten days at best. We usually finish a jersey calf and they are wonderful. They fatten well and therefore can hang a month and make very tender eating. Yum!
We won't finish a friesian again. I forgot to ask for the hanging weight. I'll think of it when we collect him next week. Hopefully!

We decided to move from disposable nappies to washable nappies. We only got them yesterday so it's early days yet but so far so good. I'll keep you updated on that as it seems like a great economy to the household budget after the initial capital investment.

I got delivery of hive parts and frames today. I had ordered them before I realised we had lost the last hive. I might not need them this season after all.



I bottled off the rest of the ginger beer yesterday and started a batch of lager. We now have a selection of mature stouts, beers and ales. We bought about 60 swing top pint bottles a couple of months ago and they were a great investment. The head/gas on each pint is great. We are very pleased on how this is working out.












Mama moo the cow has being holding up milk all week. At the start of the week I was getting a cups worth at milking and this morning I milked 4 litres. I felt like i won the lottery. The calf had cut up her teats much worse than I can expected. We are using lots of udder balm while milking (ignore the socks ) and we are not using the milk for the house yet until everything heals up. The dogs and cat are delighted with this arrangement.

We are going to start using a milking machine. I do all the milking here and it leaves me tied down while if we had a milking machine hubby would be happy to milk, and friends and neighbours.
While we would like a milking machine we don't wish to pay for one! They really are very expensive for a portable single unit.

Our neighbours both have old delaval milking units, with the help of another good neighbour we are stripping both these systems to hopefully get one functioning unit up at our place. The men were busy last night testing the units and planning the process and on Saturday we will hopefully have a working milking machine that we expect will cost maybe €100 for replacement rubber and parts.
I'm so excited about this. I always wanted a milking machine!
My job for today is to clean up this milk bucket ( in the bath )and then bring it to our co-op for them to replace all rubbers and tubing. I'm so excited!!