Cows to another field

 While needing to milk Venus it is convenient to have them by the stables so they have been in a field there since Clover was born. Finally she is old and big enough to be drinking all the milk Venus produces (maybe 10l or more a day!), so we have been able to move them to a field with more and lusher grass.

Beef red curry to celebrate!

Drying up the cows

We are now drying up Buttercup and Bluebell having weaned their calves 6 weeks ago. This takes some time as they have been so highly bred to produce lots of milk.
They need some time off to put on a bit of weight and we need some time off to do other things.
We also need to remove the weight gain effect of drinking half a liter of basically cream every lunch time along with lots of cheese, clotted cream, sour cream etc.
We will now milk every other day, then stop in about a week or ten days.

Having been doing it for over a month it feels strange having a day off it - it isn’t so much the milking that takes the time as finding uses for 8 liters of milk a day (hence the various cheese experiments).
Various friends have enjoyed it too. Here are Gary and Martine giving it a go.

You can see dairy cows have a very different build to the chunky beef cows around here. Buttercup is thin, but not unhealthily so, she should gain quite a bit of weight once she is not producing 4 liters of creamy milk everyday - that has to take a lot of grass!

We are thinking of a beef/dairy cross for their next calves - however we need to think about it, as they can sometimes have a less sweet nature.

Scones Recipe

I had to make some to go with the clotted cream!

350g self raising flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
80g butter
35g sugar
175ml buttermilk or slightly acidic milk (add squeeze lemon if needed)
Egg to glaze

Heat oven to 220C.

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Rub the butter in to the flour.
Stir in the sugar.
Warm the milk a little
Make a dough by gently mixing the milk in to the dry ingredients. Don't over work and don’t add all of it at first, keep adding till you have a stiff dough.
Turn out on to floured surface
Roll out to around 2.5cm thick and use a 6cm cutter to cut out the scones - or just cut in to squares or smaller or bigger, whatever you fancy... Press down quickly and cleanly so none of the sides are squished so the scone rise neatly.
Reroll the dough/pastry as needed.
Careful not to work the pastry too much as the scones will be hard if you do.
Glaze the tops with egg

Put on to a baking tray and cook for about 10 mins.

The egg-pocalypse is here

The chickens are keen at the moment and laying something like 8 eggs a day (between them not each!).

The situation was getting a bit overwhelming, but we wrestled it under control by eating various sorts of scrambled egg (the dog had her share too).
Salmon with cream cheese

Ham

Then I made two huge quiche and have brought 12 back to London with me for eating during the week (that's breakfast, lunch and dinner sorted!)

We don't want to complain as it is good they are happy and laying!

There is also something of a milk lake going on. So quiche good as it deals with that too. I also made butter and cheese and kefir.

The cheese is made by straining kefir in this special box thingy

Add salt. Yummy. With salmon scrambled eggs, just on its own or instead of sour cream in things.

Butter