Hello from Hilltop Farm!

As many of my friends and family know, I recently bought a dairy cow.  This idea has been rolling around in my mind for several years.  Probably since my first reading of The Maker’s Diet by Jordan Rubin.  He was touting the wonderful benefits or raw dairy for a person’s overall health.  I grew up on a dairy farm so the idea wasn’t completely foreign to me.  My husband Wil, however, thought I was out of my mind!  He grew up with range cows, horses, and sheep.  The whole dairy thing was a bit out of is reckoning.  I finally got serious about getting a cow after reading the aforementioned book again because I was experiencing long term stomach problems.  Wil finally started warming up to the idea when I showed him some web sites by people in New Mexico who seemed to be running rewarding businesses around small dairy operations (Sunshine farm and Hand Milking).

So we started to search.  We wanted a Jersey cow because they are smaller and easier to handle than the Holsteins my family milked.  My sister, Kristy, jumped on the idea as well and did most of the legwork to find the cows and arrange payment and pickup.  She lives in northeasern Arizona (Many Farms – is the town!).  She found two great cows in Mesa, AZ and picked them up July 18th, 2008.  The farmer very kindly threw in two bull calves that were born during the night.  They were very weak and we weren’t sure they were going to make it for the first few days.  We picked up our cow and calf from my sister and made the five hour trip home, arriving just in time to milk! 

If you’ve never tried it, handmilking is very hard!  Especially when you’ve never done it and your cow is a first calf heifer (small handles if you get my meaning).  I milked her ten times by hand before my automatic milker arrived.  Several buckets of milk were spilled over those ten milkings, but I had some great help from Wil, my neighbor Wendy, and our daughter Shalynn.  The milker is wonderful!  I bought it from a really nice man in Louisiana who builds and sells them while running his own farm.  I found him on Ebay and highly reccommend his product. Milking now takes about six minutes instead of 45!

After a month, I have to say I’m really enjoying the whole business!  Everyone loves the milk – it’s so delicious!  I’m not always thrilled to jump out of bed early in the morning, but once I’m up, I’m glad that I’m getting an early start on the day.  Milk, strain, skim, and make butter -what a great way to start the day!  I intend to continue to blog about my expeience, so I hope you’ll come back!