Busy time on the farm - fixing the basic utilities

I was reminded by a reader that I hadn't posted an update in a while.  Things are actually really good right now; but it's been busy, so much so that I haven't had much time to write updates

There is a lot of maintenance on this farm that was deferred.  What I mean by that is that lots of things never got fixed when they were broken, and what was fixed was often fixed in ways that I really don't like.  I'll talk about specifics in a later blog post, but the basic idea is that there's a lot of stuff that is broken, and some of the stuff is pretty important. 

 I was working by the pumphouse (the little grey building in the picture below) and noticed that the pump was running almost continuously.  In fact, it was running continuously.  So I spent an hour or so shutting off water to this or that part of the farm, and determined that I had a pretty big water leak somewhere in the ground between the pump house and barns.  I found a wet spot over where I thought that the water line ran, and dug it up and found two water lines, and one had two big leaks in it.  I also noticed that the water line wasn't buried deeply enough, and that the type of pipe used for the water line was not what I would have picked for a buried water supply line.  Whomever had done it had chosen black irrigation pipe, which is cheaper and thinner than water supply line.

So I cut out the part of the line that had failed, and patched it, and then thought about it for a while after I turned the water back on.  The pump was running less than it was, but it was still running.  This means that I have other water leaks on that same run of pipe. 

Well water is free, and that's fine, but continuous operation will burn out the pump much sooner than it should, and there's always the risk that with holes in the pipe other stuff will get into it.  So I bit the bullet and called a location company in.

Chris came out at 7:30 the next morning, and I spent most of the day with him, tracing pipes and drains and power supply lines all over the property.  His equipment was also able to determine the depth of the line being traced, and as a result, I found that most of the buried power lines were waaaay too shallow.  Dangerously close to the surface.  Water lines also were typically buried too shallow, and there were buried power lines in places I did not suspect.  At the end of the day I had a pretty good idea of where all the utilities were, and where all of the drains went. 

 

Finding a power line across the back yard

Crossing utilities market out



one thing that I found out is that I had Lots of places where things crossed.  in the picture above, the green line is a drain from the milking parlor, and the two red lines are buried power lines to a couple of pumps that are involved in the manure lagoon.  The drain was 30" down, the power lines were 5' down.    This sort of crossover makes things more complicated but I'm pretty glad I did the locate -- I have had no problems cutting or damaging things as I work. 

Water supply lines run to nursery barn

What I've been doing over the last week is replacing all of the existing water lines with the proper pipe at the proper depth, and installing frost-proof hydrants everywhere where I might want water.  I'm installing 9 hydrants around the barns (which sounds like a lot, but the barns are arranged on 5 acres, and this allows me to have water within 100 feet of anywhere -- so I can use a single hose and get water, and some of these hydrants will be used as the supply for automatic watering systems.   When I'm done I'll have water everywhere I need it, and I won't have to haul water anywhere in the winter and I'll never have to string more than a single hose anywhere. 

Total I'm installing or replacing 1500' of water line, 12 hydrants and 2 water cutoff valves.   To get the water line where it needs to go there will be lots of fittings; total project cost in parts about $2500.  I'm digging the holes with my little trackhoe.  One of the most useful farm/construction tools ever invented.   

After I finish this project I'll be digging up and reburying the power supply lines inside conduit at the code-indicated depth.  Some of the power lines were only 8" below the surface of the grass, which is crazy. 

Dairying, milking, ice cream

I actually had a milking machine ordered from perrysmilkers.com and I got that milker a week or so before my cow gave birth.  When I went to use it though, I found that I was missing a valve assembly and I couldn't use the automatic milker, and so I milked by hand for a week while I waited for the part to arrive. 

I have to say that hand milking takes a long time, especially with a cow that's producing 3 to 4 gallons of milk a day.  She's on a grass diet, with a bit of alfalfa added, and is nursing a calf, but even after all of that our share of the milk is more than 3 gallons a day. 

It takes a while to milk out 3 gallons, at least for me.  20 to 30 minutes if I am not interrupted by something.  I'd sit on a stool next to her and press my forehead against her side, and pull the milk out, tablespoon by tablespoon.  I never felt like I got all of the milk when I was hand-milking, but I'd milk a gallon or so and call it good. 

The basic routine is to use warm soapy water to wash off her udder, and I'd wash the inside of her back legs too, for good measure.  I was hand-washing into a bucket, and anything on the rear of the cow seemed to be magically attracted to the bucket, and I learned to carefully inspect her rear to make sure that there wasn't anything that could fall into it.  I donated a couple of buckets of milk to the cows, and then learned to milk a pint or two, pour it off into another bucket, safe from contamination, and then continue to milk. 

After milking I use a an udder dip to disinfect the nipples and prevent infection, and she's good to go for the next 12 hours. 

This cow has decided that milking is probably ok now, and it's been a while since she kicked the bucket or moved much.  Routine and repetition helps a lot.   She waits patiently while I decide how much milk I'm willing to work for, and then, when the gates open, she saunters out with wide eyed curiosity, as if everything along the path she's taken twice a day is brand-new and sparkling.   She'll pause and look at the bunch of grass growing in the concrete.  She does that every day.  Apparently it's the cow equivalent of catnip, but she never eats it.  She stops, stares at it, gets closer and sniffs it, and then, with a flip of her tail, moves on. 

The milk itself is interesting to look at.  You can see the butterfat, almost a gilding on top of the white milk, with a golden shimmer.  It comes out with a bit of foam because it shoots out of the nipples with some force, like a squirt gun. 

I saved the cream from two milkings, and had enough to make 2 gallons of ice cream; so I made 4 batches of 2 quarts each, different flavors.  I had the oddest result.  Following the recipe in the ice cream maker, 1.5 cups of whole milk, and 2.5 cups of cream, I made a vanilla ice cream that was pretty darned good.  But it left me with the lasting impression that I was eating butter.  The Jersey milk has a high butterfat content, and I'm actually having to cut down on the amount of cream to get something that is closer to the really good icecream that I like. 

Don't get me wrong; it was good, rich, custardy icecream.  Closer to french vanilla than anything else, but instead of egg yolks being added to make it yellow, the yellow in this ice cream was butter.  Very tasty butter.  Vanilla frozen butter.

So I've been working the the proportions, cream and milk, and I've found that basically a half-and-half produces a very rich icecream that doesn't have quite the butter experience that the first batch did. 

Wow. Butter

On the top is a cube of standard butter; it's a premium brand, and it's what I've been using for the last few years. 
Below that is fresh jersey butter.  The color is so vivid it looks like cake frosting; it's really beautiful stuff. 

I skimmed the cream off of yesterdays milking and used the stand mixer to make butter; took about 5 minutes, and what emerged is really, really nice.  Since I'm used to salted butter I'm still working out how to salt to taste (you'll see some flakes of kosher salt on the surface of the jersey butter) but I don't think I'll be buying any more butter in the store.  Ever.  

I'm getting 4 gallons a day from her, and that's  more milk than I can possibly consume, but it does allow me to start working with cheese making.  I made a batch of fresh mozzarella cheese last night that is to die for; it is SO much better made with raw milk than pasteurized. 

Jersey milk is pretty wonderful stuff.

On day 3 of milking she's settled down a little; she understands the routine, and it's the same every day, and practice and repetition will make it her new normal.

I am share-milking her with the calf; the calf gets part of her production, and we get part.