Keeping Up on Processing Milk

We milk 2 Jersey cows with a third freshening in July. This provides a fair amount of milk for our family and animals year around. Even with bottle raising calves we process about 5 gallons of milk per day for our family. The needs of each family are different, but we make our own butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese, aged cheeses, mozzarella, sour cream, and buttermilk. Processing milk can be overwhelming to a homesteader. Here is how we keep up on all the milk around here.

We have an established kitchen time each morning. Everyone has assigned chores to be done before breakfast. Some tidy the house and their rooms, another takes care of the animals, and a couple of us work in the kitchen. We have a variety of things to do in the kitchen each morning but one important task is to process milk.

On Monday mornings we pull all the milk out of the refrigerator outside in the garage. Over the weekend, when we are not dealing with milk each morning, the milk has built up. We take it all out, except about a gallon. We skim off all the cream and churn it in to butter in a food processor. We use a hand churn sometimes, but on Mondays when there is usually a gallon and a half of cream we use the electric equipment. We then pour the milk in to 2 five gallon buckets to sit aside for the week. This is the animal’s milk. It will curdle in the buckets and the next Monday be taken outside to the barn to be fed to the pigs and chickens.

After churning the butter, we press out the buttermilk and add it to jars in the frig. We keep about a gallon and half of buttermilk at all times for cooking and baking with. From cornbread and biscuits to waffles and pancakes, buttermilk makes many yummy baked goods. We wash the butter, salt it, and freeze it in 1 cup balls until we need it or can it.

The milk keeps coming in and on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we make either cheese, yogurt, or cream cheese depending on our needs. At least twice a week we make one of our two favorite recipes – havarti and Monterey Jack. We have our processes timed out to our morning schedule so it is not overwhelming.

We begin kitchen time at 6:45 AM. We skim the milk of half of the cream and warm 3 gallons in a double boiler set-up. We culture the milk while it is still cold and slowly heat to the required temperature. Breakfast is at 8:00 AM so right after we eat we add the rennet the cheese. At the end of cleaning up from breakfast we cut the curds and let the settle. We then warm the curds according the process dictated by the recipe. After Bible we are usually ready to press the cheese.

Later that day we turn the cheese in the press and the next morning it is removed from the press.  We place the cheese on a small plate in the pantry and turn it frequently allowing it to air dry. After a week of air drying we vacuum seal the cheese in a plastic bag and place it in a plastic storage tub in the cellar.  We age most of our cheese about 3 months before enjoying in a variety of dishes.

Cheesemaking can be a daunting task taking about 3.5 hours, but if you complete it along with other work it is much more manageable.