Maid-N-Meadows Spring 2018 Update!

        Goodness! It has been a long climb to get to this point! (Literally and figuratively) Here is the hill poor one-eyed Bertha slid/tumbled down in a roaming adventure gone wrong! Landing upside down and ready to bloat, another hour and we would have lost her.

             After we brought our cows from the home farm to the cheese facility, the cows had us on the run for a couple of days. The bluff in the picture above is right behind the field the cows graze in. We moved 6 cows to the facility last year and not a single one ventured over it. This year we had two! Bertha started a slid down and by the looks of things, it turned into an awful tumble which wedged her against a tree with her feet up hill. But the other cow, Seven, disappeared over the bluff and was gone for a full 36 hours. Daniel and Jake tromped through the countryside, with some assistance from Heavenly Homestead's Terry, but finally had to give up. Low and behold she showed up at milking time the next evening at the barn gate. (Praise God!)
          We also had our share of equipment malfunctions. On the first Saturday night our pulsator quit. There was no place to get a replacement but at our own home barn so we stripped it off the wall and ran it back to the facility only to have it burn up in 20 minutes. Apparently it was only wired for 120, while the facility pulsator ran at 210. That was a bit of a waste! We finally installed a new one on Monday. Many thanks go to the milk hand for her help in that storm, because Daniel had been gone almost all week dealing with roaming cattle and I was ready to have him home.

Pilgrim feeding beets at milking time.

           But great things have been happening too. Daniel and the big boys got down to work and scrubbed the facility clean for the new year.

Daniel blowing bubbles! HA!

The Milk Safety Branch got us quickly inspected, which meant the milk in the tank could get into the cheese vat rather than dribble down the drain. We have an awesome milk hand who has helped us keep things running on the home front. AND hooray! Today we made another batch of cheese! So it is happening! Things are coming along!
           On the home front, the sheep fence is up. The boys pulled together and pulled it with the tractor and then stapled it in place. So the sheep are back in our pasture and not our neighbor's. What a relief!

             So here we are! Making cheese and scrambling to get the truck fixed so we can start working on the cheese facility. We want to take this moment to thank everyone who has helped this venture make it this far. It has been a wild ride, thanks for coming along or blazing the trail, whichever the case may be!