Steps to making butter

This is a typical picture of a day's worth of milk, although most times we have three full gallons. But the cream from that good Jersey cow is just hard to beat! You can see how the cream rises to the top.

I'm typically a black coffee drinker. But that's rather in the past right now. It's just hard to resist a couple scoops of cream ~ cream so thick the plastic ladle doesn't sink! It's better than buying Coffee Mate.

It's lovely thick rich cream. I've already set a stainless steel ladle on top and it didn't sink for a little while.

With this much cream, we like to make our own butter. I use the Bosch blender as I never owned a food processor. It is very interesting watching the steps in the chemical change of the milk.

 

Just a few seconds of blending and it's already getting thick.

Start out with it set to 3, but at this stage, slow it down to 1.

This is the limit with how full to make the blender.

 

The cream is changing and you'll notice it will get 'watery',

until it completely separates.

 

Stop the blender and the butter rises to the top.

Now strain the milk from the butter. I have yet to learn how to use this low fat milk. We used it for potato soup and it turned out fine. I've read you can drink it if you don't mind the low fat or use it in any recipe that calls for milk.

Another source said it's buttermilk, but I like mine thicker than that. I'm waiting for my culture from New England Cheesemaking to come in the mail. Heavenly Homemakers has a fabulous blog.

 

After the milk is strained, I like to rinse mine with cold water several time then blend it again.

And here's the butter from the thickest part of the cream, the top.

Twice more of the above procedure and we got a pile this size.

Now is the fun part, working it. Some use a wooden bowl and spoon, but since I don't have the wooden bowl I use my hands.

Just make sure your hands are cold. If the butter melts or is too soft, hold it under cold water or rinse your hands with cold water. It helps to keep the butter firm. As you're working it, the remainder liquid squeezes out.

Some folks don't rinse their butter, and that's perfectly fine.

 

I thought you always had to keep homemade butter refrigerated, but I've found that rinsing it helps to ward off the milk smell. Salting to your taste helps preserve it. Sea salt is great to use.

Keep it in a crock at room temperature.

We got over 1½ pounds of the best butter you'll ever taste. All from the 3 gallons of milk.

***** ***** *****

We loved yesterday's incentive, we decided to do it again. We had an early start with school, then Amber packed our lunch.

We made a couple stops, then went on a nature hike. There's this trail we often passed, but never explored. What a lovely walk! It's about a mile long and lies beside a creek.

On the way back, we had our first grader Braden learn about talley marks. He had his pencil and tablet along for some unknown reason. I had no idea he was going to bring that and I don't know his motivation. But he sure took a liking to keeping tabs for something.

Math is his favorite subject. His face beams when he's working!!!

I told him that I'm not counting the bridges. I want to know how many there are and I'm leaving him totally responsible. Big sister was there if he needed assistance. At the end, there were eight. That's how many times we crossed the creek.

Landon was to talley the number of benches where one could rest. He didn't do so well, but I kept track by holding sticks and we ended up with three.

It was an eventful hike, altogether over 2 miles. Wildflowers are always a joy to behold.

Dodging dung isn't that great, but it's certainly better than black snakes. Amber was in the lead, and she thought there was a plastic tube on the path. It WAS a plastic tube, but not the type she initially thought. A black snake stopped her dead in her tracks and sent her running back several feet while her heart continued to race.

Zach got a stick and poked the tail several times and then it slithered away to hide in the tall grass beside the creek. It had been sunning itself in the sun. And we had another oppurtunity to talk about the Bible story in Genesis, the fall of Adam and Eve. Amber had recently learned that the cobra is not really a snake, it's a lizard without legs. That story fits the Bible.

We saw some "B" words: black snake, black crickets.
That was their letter for the second week of school.

Better than that was the delightful scent of grapes and although the season is past, we saw the remains of grapes on the ground and some lingering ones hanging on the tops of the vines. I wish we could have reached them for a taste.

We got back and finished eating our lunch of chips and salsa and fruit slush. We had eaten our sandwiches while on our walk.

Cold water and  frozen slush were the best things to cool us off from our hot walk. What a wonderful blessing!
We'll be doing that trail again. It's an invigorating way to get some PE in our schedule.