www.JackrabbitCheese.com
We’ll be milking ten goats this year– more than we’ve ever milked before, but not enough to keep our equipment busy. So we’ve been looking for a cow dairy from which to buy milk for making other varieties of cheese.
This week, we came to an agreement with a dairy out west of us. It’s a huge facility with state of the art equipment– and the owner has a reputation for doing things right.
Here’s a look at how a large but ethical dairy does things.
(Wikimedia photo.)
As winter finally breaks into spring, my thoughts turn to gardening. The promise of fresh food that is both tastier and better for the earth than anything we can buy in a store is tantalizing. As soon as tax season is over, I’m ready to trade my laptop for a shovel.
Our soil is challenging, [...]
In Canada, a small farmer with 99 or fewer hens can sell “ungraded” eggs at his/her gate, but nowhere else. So a small farmer who sells eggs at the farmers market is breaking the law. With prices for farmstead eggs skyrocketing, industrial egg producers are fighting back against what they see as an infringement [...]
(DJ Mitchell Photo) Suellen & Annie
This picture is our East view. Obviously taken during a warmer time of the year. DJ is already getting spring fever and has ordered some seeds for the garden.
“On the one side, the hard-line aggies seem convinced that a bunch of know-nothing urbanites want to send them back to Stone Age farming techniques. On the other side, there’s a tendency by agricultural reformers to lump together all farms (or at least those that aren’t purely organic, hemp-clad mom-and-pop operations) as thoughtless ravagers of [...]
We bought our new (used) pasteurizer last fall, never thinking that it didn’t come with a manual. After weeks of internet searches, emails, and phone calls, we finally found someone who knows how it works.
It turns out the hot water (yes, thankfully it’s designed for hot water, not steam) is delivered under pressure, sprays against [...]
(Image source)
“[F]armers in 1941 wanted high-value grains like wheat and corn that they could sell off the farm, [but] they didn’t yet have the mined and manufactured fertilizers needed to get high yields from those crops. Instead, they colected nutrients from large areas of land using low-value crops like grass and alfalfa, fed them to [...]
Another glimpse into the past, this time to the fundos of Chile in 1949.
“Almost all of Chile’s arable land is in single great land holdings of 5,000 to 50,000 acres, in vivid contrast to the small farms of North America where the owner and his family do most of the work.”
True perhaps in 1949, but [...]
Made in 1948, this film discusses the post-war program to develop “The Chicken of Tomorrow”– the chickens we buy in stores today. I doubt they realized at the time that the chicken industry would be completely changed, based on mono-crops raised in confined spaces. Already, the methods displayed in the film show chickens confined, unable to [...]
The United Nations FAO offers this analysis of solar-powered dairy projects. Their conclusion: It’s feasible, but not cheap. Note that, in 1981 dollars, a cheese facility of the size we’re building would cost over $150,000. That’s over $355,000 in 2008 dollars.
Using innovation, used equipment, comparison shopping, and just plain Yankee frugality, we’re putting ours together [...]
The Cheesemaker is our favorite source of cultures and supplies for making cheese.
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