I thought I'd share the links I had found recently with the help of google and the beginning women farmer's yahoo group should anyone else be hunting for obscure diary supplies or old/new ideas.
http://www.microdairysystems.com/
-out of south royalton VT. has 40 and 50 gallon bulk tanks and other good stuff.
http://www.smalldairy.com/
- a wealth of information, links and classified section.
http://www.microdairydesigns.com/
- their website seems like it is still a work in progress, but offers small scale pasteurizers.
http://www.hambydairysupply.com/
-if you find a pail milker at the salvage yard and need new gaskets for it, this is the place to go. also has lots of other neat stuff.
Friday, December 31, 2010
he sees you when you're sleeping. he knows when you're awake. he knows if you leave your milk room doors open!!!
This week the milk inspector came. The milk inspector is someone employed by the state to inspect all dairy farms twice a year and make sure that we're not doing anything too egregious. As you might imagine, he is not the most popular of characters. In fact, for a while I didn't even know his name, I knew him only by the unfortunate but descriptive epithets used by the people at my old job to refer to him.
Now don't get me wrong, I think he is a good guy who does his best at a difficult job. But it gets my panties in a twist to have someone walk around the farm and find shit to criticize. But I smile and nod and agree that I will find out what the meat withold is for some obscure Chinese herbal medicine stashed in the back of the vet cabinet and thank the department of ag that he won't be back for another six months.
My uncle told me a story that sums up most dairy farmers' opinions of their milk inspectors:
When my uncle met his girlfriend's (the woman who i have known as my aunt for my whole life) dairy farming father for the first time, he addressed him as Mr. So-and-So. My uncle says his future father-in-law looked him right in the eye and said "Son, call me by my first name. Only one person calls me Mr. So-and-so and it's the milk inspector."
Now don't get me wrong, I think he is a good guy who does his best at a difficult job. But it gets my panties in a twist to have someone walk around the farm and find shit to criticize. But I smile and nod and agree that I will find out what the meat withold is for some obscure Chinese herbal medicine stashed in the back of the vet cabinet and thank the department of ag that he won't be back for another six months.
My uncle told me a story that sums up most dairy farmers' opinions of their milk inspectors:
When my uncle met his girlfriend's (the woman who i have known as my aunt for my whole life) dairy farming father for the first time, he addressed him as Mr. So-and-So. My uncle says his future father-in-law looked him right in the eye and said "Son, call me by my first name. Only one person calls me Mr. So-and-so and it's the milk inspector."
Monday, December 27, 2010
santa brought me a new vocabulary word
i was listening to says you in the barn sunday night. a quiz game that they play each week is one where the host gives a strange word and one team gives several definitions, one of which is correct and the other team must guess what is the true meaning.
last night the word was jibb, which turned out to mean "to milk a cow out completely." i think they should use the word in a sentence or at least say where they found these words because it was hard to know how to use the word in context. but google books seems to suggest the word "jibbings" was in some sort of usage in scotland, meaning the last, richest milk.
i wanted to try out google's ngram viewer with this but i found out that jibb is an alternate spelling of jib - the part of a ship, and is also something bad (i can't quite determine what) that a horse can do, and, more recently, it refers to a trick done on a snowboard.
here's a sentence that i think is correct:
the light on top of our milking machines flashes when the cow is giving her jibbings.
last night the word was jibb, which turned out to mean "to milk a cow out completely." i think they should use the word in a sentence or at least say where they found these words because it was hard to know how to use the word in context. but google books seems to suggest the word "jibbings" was in some sort of usage in scotland, meaning the last, richest milk.
i wanted to try out google's ngram viewer with this but i found out that jibb is an alternate spelling of jib - the part of a ship, and is also something bad (i can't quite determine what) that a horse can do, and, more recently, it refers to a trick done on a snowboard.
here's a sentence that i think is correct:
the light on top of our milking machines flashes when the cow is giving her jibbings.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Praise Him for His Grace and Favor to our fathers in distress
A few years ago I read a passage from a book by Gene Lodgson that was a nice description of livestock in a barn which concluded with the idea that the place was so pleasant that, naturally, god would choose it as the spot for his son to be born. I thought I would find it again and type it out here for Christmas. But I can't remember what book it was in or where I read it so that will have to wait for another year.
Here is a Christmas story by Willem Lange, a writer from New Hampshire. It is very farmy and very New Englandy, so I thought it would go well here. http://www.vpr.net/episode/30488/
Here is a Christmas story by Willem Lange, a writer from New Hampshire. It is very farmy and very New Englandy, so I thought it would go well here. http://www.vpr.net/episode/30488/
Monday, December 20, 2010
inflammatory mediators that cause hypersecretion
This entry contains elaborate descriptions of poop and pooping.
On Wednesday one of the cows had the shits and a runny nose and the next day a few more did and then a few more the next until by Saturday I was convinced they were all going to die in an ebola like puddle of their own body fluids. After my anxious phone call vet came and said it was probably just winter dysentery and that it was highly unlikely that anyone was going to die. I talked to a few other more seasoned less panic prone farmers who said that their cows get this (perhaps not so severely) every winter and get over it in a week. The Merk Veterinary Manual will tell you all about it. It's basically super contagious diarrhea with cough thing that cows who have to stay in a barn for the winter are pretty likely to get.
After my fears were assuaged, the situation became amazingly comic in a way that I, (and my candy ass digestive tract) having spent some time living in south east Asia, could fully identify with. I had no idea an animal could project it's own fecal matter a distance that would be measured in yards without using their arms. If the cows coughed while they were shitting, they could hit cows on the other side of the barn. Normally cows will lift their tails before they go to the bathroom, but sometimes the need to poo seemed to come on too fast and the stream would hit the back of their tail and splatter in all directions. I tried to stay out of the way of most of it and being on my guard spared me from a few direct hits. The barn cats retreated out into the cold and snow rather than be forced witness (and perhaps clean themselves off from) the mayhem. I milked last night with a rain coat on. But when I got home and looked in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth, I immediately had to stop and wash my face. twice.
On Wednesday one of the cows had the shits and a runny nose and the next day a few more did and then a few more the next until by Saturday I was convinced they were all going to die in an ebola like puddle of their own body fluids. After my anxious phone call vet came and said it was probably just winter dysentery and that it was highly unlikely that anyone was going to die. I talked to a few other more seasoned less panic prone farmers who said that their cows get this (perhaps not so severely) every winter and get over it in a week. The Merk Veterinary Manual will tell you all about it. It's basically super contagious diarrhea with cough thing that cows who have to stay in a barn for the winter are pretty likely to get.
After my fears were assuaged, the situation became amazingly comic in a way that I, (and my candy ass digestive tract) having spent some time living in south east Asia, could fully identify with. I had no idea an animal could project it's own fecal matter a distance that would be measured in yards without using their arms. If the cows coughed while they were shitting, they could hit cows on the other side of the barn. Normally cows will lift their tails before they go to the bathroom, but sometimes the need to poo seemed to come on too fast and the stream would hit the back of their tail and splatter in all directions. I tried to stay out of the way of most of it and being on my guard spared me from a few direct hits. The barn cats retreated out into the cold and snow rather than be forced witness (and perhaps clean themselves off from) the mayhem. I milked last night with a rain coat on. But when I got home and looked in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth, I immediately had to stop and wash my face. twice.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
cows can't use the phone.
I told Shannon this story and she thought it was funny and that I should post it here.
The farm I work on gets a lot of visitors. The owners have built an amazing cheese aging complex at the farm and people come from all over America and Europe to see it. It really is pretty cool. But these cellars are not visible from the road. The thing that is visible from the road is the barn. So, if someone has not ever been to the farm before, he or she is most likely to stop at the first place they come to - the barn. I frequently direct people to the cellars while I'm at work. Sometimes people are also interested in the cows. We have Ayrshires, a not entirely rare breed of cattle but certainly more unusual than the standard Holstein or Jersey.
One of the first days I was ever at work by myself a man walked confidently in the barn, introduced himself and said he was here to see Zoe. He seemed like he knew what was going on, so I led him over to Zoe, who was happily eating her afternoon grain ration.
He looked at me funny and said slowly "I'm here to see Zoe."
"This is Zoe." I said, pointing to the name tag above her stall.
"I talked to her on the phone."
"Oh .... uh .... oh the phone?" I said sheepishly. Then I realized that I didn't really know the names of everyone who worked at the cellars yet and I wondered if there was someone there named Zoe.
"Yes, on the phone."
"I bet she is over at the office, then," I said and directed him over to the cellars.
The farm I work on gets a lot of visitors. The owners have built an amazing cheese aging complex at the farm and people come from all over America and Europe to see it. It really is pretty cool. But these cellars are not visible from the road. The thing that is visible from the road is the barn. So, if someone has not ever been to the farm before, he or she is most likely to stop at the first place they come to - the barn. I frequently direct people to the cellars while I'm at work. Sometimes people are also interested in the cows. We have Ayrshires, a not entirely rare breed of cattle but certainly more unusual than the standard Holstein or Jersey.
One of the first days I was ever at work by myself a man walked confidently in the barn, introduced himself and said he was here to see Zoe. He seemed like he knew what was going on, so I led him over to Zoe, who was happily eating her afternoon grain ration.
He looked at me funny and said slowly "I'm here to see Zoe."
"This is Zoe." I said, pointing to the name tag above her stall.
"I talked to her on the phone."
"Oh .... uh .... oh the phone?" I said sheepishly. Then I realized that I didn't really know the names of everyone who worked at the cellars yet and I wondered if there was someone there named Zoe.
"Yes, on the phone."
"I bet she is over at the office, then," I said and directed him over to the cellars.
amish paradise
A while ago I came upon a paper out of Ohio State in the Journal of Extension about making enterprise budgets for Amish Farms. I didn't have a chance to read when I found it, so I saved it to my desktop to read later. Later turned out to be yesterday.
Many extension offices put out enterprise budgets. They are basically the average costs and returns for growing some particular crop. It takes Z man hours to grow an acre of corn. It costs X to grow an acre of corn. The return on that acre will be Y - or whatever. But, as you might imagine, Amish farmers using different equipment on a much smaller scale have fairly different enterprise budgets.
The whole paper is here: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:aH1xwLCyEOsJ:sustainableag.osu.edu/education/documents/AmishFarmEconomicssep05_000.doc+amish+farm+economics&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjqzukd3tiVzyT-Swrvfz1Rp0NkruGV9l16PmpJOa7BKp7Rzr9p-kv2UK8t3Nq67f8q0DtUoQlFkVNifBnyGDtcQ6_Ffu84rn6dkSYFeLSsQWVu3MdYkV8dusMwxfGMIyTlthWL&sig=AHIEtbRAukyue3wnlAVNGqzuB_kDe9W-Nw and is a great read. The paper notes that the returns on 100 horse powered acres of corn, hay and small grains are significantly higher than those same crops produced in a conventional manner. Also, the paper recognizes that while horses went out of vogue about 100 years ago with the rest of the country, Amish farms are one of the fastest growing sectors of the agricultural industry and that the Amish continue to establish new farms at a time when more and more farms are going under.
Many extension offices put out enterprise budgets. They are basically the average costs and returns for growing some particular crop. It takes Z man hours to grow an acre of corn. It costs X to grow an acre of corn. The return on that acre will be Y - or whatever. But, as you might imagine, Amish farmers using different equipment on a much smaller scale have fairly different enterprise budgets.
The whole paper is here: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:aH1xwLCyEOsJ:sustainableag.osu.edu/education/documents/AmishFarmEconomicssep05_000.doc+amish+farm+economics&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjqzukd3tiVzyT-Swrvfz1Rp0NkruGV9l16PmpJOa7BKp7Rzr9p-kv2UK8t3Nq67f8q0DtUoQlFkVNifBnyGDtcQ6_Ffu84rn6dkSYFeLSsQWVu3MdYkV8dusMwxfGMIyTlthWL&sig=AHIEtbRAukyue3wnlAVNGqzuB_kDe9W-Nw and is a great read. The paper notes that the returns on 100 horse powered acres of corn, hay and small grains are significantly higher than those same crops produced in a conventional manner. Also, the paper recognizes that while horses went out of vogue about 100 years ago with the rest of the country, Amish farms are one of the fastest growing sectors of the agricultural industry and that the Amish continue to establish new farms at a time when more and more farms are going under.
Monday, December 6, 2010
bacteria attack
Cows shit. They shit a lot. And piss. They piss fountains. And the idea that people have come to enjoy consuming a product from a cow which is harvested not 18 inches from the end of her digestive tract makes you think that god may enjoy a good joke (either that or he's a vegan). Keeping bacteria out of milk and off the cow in general is the major battle fought by dairy farmers.
Pasteurization has allowed farmers to circumvent way too much of this battle. If your milk is getting nuked at 160 or 180 or whatever degrees, not too much bacteria - harmful or otherwise - is gonna survive. But if you work on a farm where the milk is sold raw (unpasteurized) or made into raw milk cheese (unpasteurized milk is used to make the cheese), you have to be really really clean.
Our farm makes a few different raw milk cheeses, so we are incredibly careful when we milk. We clean every speck of sawdust or shit or dirt off her teats before milking as well as sanitizing with iodine before and afterwards. We also scrape down their stalls and rebed them with fresh dry bedding 4 times a day in addition to a few spot checks. When the milk is tested the coliform count is usually less than 10 (10 bacteria per milliliter).
But inspite of all our hard work, germs persist and pop up at the most unfortunate moments. Yesterday's make (the unripened cheese) had coliform contamination. In just 18 hours the cheese had blown up with holes and looked like a sponge when you cut it open. 1700 pounds of milk, 2500 dollars worth of cheese, was good only to feed to the pigs. Coliform bacteria is all over the place but the most likely place, the place filled with 50 large animals that shit prodigiously, is the barn. I cleaned it extra well and milked extra carefully yesterday. We will see how todays make goes. If the contamination persists, we will have to start hunting for potential spots of funk - inside milking machines, the milk pipeline or the cheesemaking plant that might be the source of our problem.
Another bad thing that sometimes happens is that bacteria get inside a cow's teat and give her an infection. The two main kinds of bacteria that do this are staph bacteria and strep bacteria - (coliform bacteria can also get inside a cow's teat but that's more rare). Most infections either clear up on their own or are treated with an antibiotic. But there is one kind of bacteria Staph Aureus that can't be killed. Once a cow has it there are basically only two options, to ship the cow (off to be made into hamburger) or to try and kill the quarter (teat). This is one of the most brutal things I have done to an animal that was not meant to kill it. You simply put 1/4 cup of bleach in a big syringe and shoot it in the quarter. And then you do it again the next day and again the next until all the milk producing tissue (and the bacteria hanging out there too) in that quarter are dead. As you might imagine, the cow gets wise to what's gonna happen after the first dose and is capable of putting up one hell of a fight.
Last week we found out that one of the cows had Staph A. Rather than risk infecting other animals or having the painful treatment not be successful, we decided to ship her. It is sad to watch an invisible thing that does not even make the animal visibly sick bring about her demise. But perhaps this is the fate of those at the top of the food chain, to be in constant battle with those at the bottom.
Pasteurization has allowed farmers to circumvent way too much of this battle. If your milk is getting nuked at 160 or 180 or whatever degrees, not too much bacteria - harmful or otherwise - is gonna survive. But if you work on a farm where the milk is sold raw (unpasteurized) or made into raw milk cheese (unpasteurized milk is used to make the cheese), you have to be really really clean.
Our farm makes a few different raw milk cheeses, so we are incredibly careful when we milk. We clean every speck of sawdust or shit or dirt off her teats before milking as well as sanitizing with iodine before and afterwards. We also scrape down their stalls and rebed them with fresh dry bedding 4 times a day in addition to a few spot checks. When the milk is tested the coliform count is usually less than 10 (10 bacteria per milliliter).
But inspite of all our hard work, germs persist and pop up at the most unfortunate moments. Yesterday's make (the unripened cheese) had coliform contamination. In just 18 hours the cheese had blown up with holes and looked like a sponge when you cut it open. 1700 pounds of milk, 2500 dollars worth of cheese, was good only to feed to the pigs. Coliform bacteria is all over the place but the most likely place, the place filled with 50 large animals that shit prodigiously, is the barn. I cleaned it extra well and milked extra carefully yesterday. We will see how todays make goes. If the contamination persists, we will have to start hunting for potential spots of funk - inside milking machines, the milk pipeline or the cheesemaking plant that might be the source of our problem.
Another bad thing that sometimes happens is that bacteria get inside a cow's teat and give her an infection. The two main kinds of bacteria that do this are staph bacteria and strep bacteria - (coliform bacteria can also get inside a cow's teat but that's more rare). Most infections either clear up on their own or are treated with an antibiotic. But there is one kind of bacteria Staph Aureus that can't be killed. Once a cow has it there are basically only two options, to ship the cow (off to be made into hamburger) or to try and kill the quarter (teat). This is one of the most brutal things I have done to an animal that was not meant to kill it. You simply put 1/4 cup of bleach in a big syringe and shoot it in the quarter. And then you do it again the next day and again the next until all the milk producing tissue (and the bacteria hanging out there too) in that quarter are dead. As you might imagine, the cow gets wise to what's gonna happen after the first dose and is capable of putting up one hell of a fight.
Last week we found out that one of the cows had Staph A. Rather than risk infecting other animals or having the painful treatment not be successful, we decided to ship her. It is sad to watch an invisible thing that does not even make the animal visibly sick bring about her demise. But perhaps this is the fate of those at the top of the food chain, to be in constant battle with those at the bottom.
Friday, December 3, 2010
even a stopped clock is right twice a day
So, on Monday the Senate passed s 510 with the Tester amendment. *shrug* I guess that's the best that could have been hoped for.
Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser have a few good things to say about the legislation in the New York Times.
www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html
edit: i could read it for free last night but this morning they want me to have an account .... i'm not sure what the deal is there.
edit edit: i have just arrived in 2010! accounts for the nyt are free, you just have to make one.
Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser have a few good things to say about the legislation in the New York Times.
www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html
edit: i could read it for free last night but this morning they want me to have an account .... i'm not sure what the deal is there.
edit edit: i have just arrived in 2010! accounts for the nyt are free, you just have to make one.
wealth wasn't made in a day, boys
You may or may not know that I think Laura Ingalls Wilder and the life she portrayed in her Little House books are pretty cool. Well, the pig killing and prairie loving are cool; the parts where your mom says "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" and your dad dresses up in black face and participates in a minstrel show makes my pinko commie heart queasy. But that discussion is probably for my other blog "using my white privilege for it's intended purpose."
Anyway, for those not in the know, in her 50's and 60's Wilder wrote 7 books about her girlhood. The series ends with her marriage to Almanzo Wilder, the hot farmer with the bomb horses, and they life happily ever after.
Sort of.
Actually the first years of the Wilders' marriage are filled with tragedies including (but not limited to) their house burning down, their baby dying, and getting typhoid which left Almanzo partially paralyzed. Bright eyed youngsters can read about their Job-like battle in an 8th book "The First Four Years," which will harsh their mellow more than the beginning of "By the Shores of Silver Lake" which tells the story of her dog dying and her sister going blind. Laura started writing "The First Four Years", but then never finished it because of Almanzo's death. After Laura's death her daughter Rose had the manuscript and then after Rose's death, her executor found the papers and published them in their rough form.
If you didn't get the idea yet, the book is sort of a major downer. But at the end is a happy scene with Almanzo going to the barn to do chores and singing a verse from a song:
You may talk of the mines of Australia,
They're loaded with gold, without doubt.
But there's plenty of gold on the farm, boys,
If only you'll shovel it out.
I always really liked it and wondered how the rest of the song went. The other day I googled it and found all the lyrics (which follow) and the sheet music: go library of congress. There is a (not very good) video on youtube of a group singing the song and there are several (much better) versions on iTunes.
I think Almanzo would be happy the song is still being sung.
STAY ON THE FARM
Come, boys, I will tell you a story;
Come here, I will whisper it low.
Are you thinking of leaving the homestead?
Don't be in a hurry to go.
For the city has many attractions,
But think of the vices and sins.
Though once in the vortex of fashion,
How soon the course downward begins!
Chorus:
Don't be in a hurry to go,
Don't be in a hurry to go.
If you're thinking of leaving the homestead,
Don't be in a hurry to go.
You may talk of the mines of Australia,
They're loaded with gold, without doubt.
But there's plenty of gold on the farm, boys,
If only you'll shovel it out.
The mercantile life is a hazard;
The goods are first high and then low.
Better trust the old farm a while longer.
Don't be in a hurry to go.
The wild, busy west has inducements,
And so has the busiest mart,
But wealth wasn't made in a day, boys;
Don't be in a hurry to start.
The bankers and brokers are wealthy;
They bring in their thousands or so.
But think of the frauds and deceptions;
Don't be in a hurry to go.
So, the farm is the safest and surest;
The orchards are loaded today.
You're King of the Air on the mountain,
And monarch of all you survey.
Better risk the old farm a while longer,
Though the profits come in rather slow.
Remember, you've nothing to lose, boys,
Don't be in a hurry to go.
Late 19th Century song found in a turn-of-the-century Grange song book.
Anyway, for those not in the know, in her 50's and 60's Wilder wrote 7 books about her girlhood. The series ends with her marriage to Almanzo Wilder, the hot farmer with the bomb horses, and they life happily ever after.
Sort of.
Actually the first years of the Wilders' marriage are filled with tragedies including (but not limited to) their house burning down, their baby dying, and getting typhoid which left Almanzo partially paralyzed. Bright eyed youngsters can read about their Job-like battle in an 8th book "The First Four Years," which will harsh their mellow more than the beginning of "By the Shores of Silver Lake" which tells the story of her dog dying and her sister going blind. Laura started writing "The First Four Years", but then never finished it because of Almanzo's death. After Laura's death her daughter Rose had the manuscript and then after Rose's death, her executor found the papers and published them in their rough form.
If you didn't get the idea yet, the book is sort of a major downer. But at the end is a happy scene with Almanzo going to the barn to do chores and singing a verse from a song:
You may talk of the mines of Australia,
They're loaded with gold, without doubt.
But there's plenty of gold on the farm, boys,
If only you'll shovel it out.
I always really liked it and wondered how the rest of the song went. The other day I googled it and found all the lyrics (which follow) and the sheet music: go library of congress. There is a (not very good) video on youtube of a group singing the song and there are several (much better) versions on iTunes.
I think Almanzo would be happy the song is still being sung.
STAY ON THE FARM
Come, boys, I will tell you a story;
Come here, I will whisper it low.
Are you thinking of leaving the homestead?
Don't be in a hurry to go.
For the city has many attractions,
But think of the vices and sins.
Though once in the vortex of fashion,
How soon the course downward begins!
Chorus:
Don't be in a hurry to go,
Don't be in a hurry to go.
If you're thinking of leaving the homestead,
Don't be in a hurry to go.
You may talk of the mines of Australia,
They're loaded with gold, without doubt.
But there's plenty of gold on the farm, boys,
If only you'll shovel it out.
The mercantile life is a hazard;
The goods are first high and then low.
Better trust the old farm a while longer.
Don't be in a hurry to go.
The wild, busy west has inducements,
And so has the busiest mart,
But wealth wasn't made in a day, boys;
Don't be in a hurry to start.
The bankers and brokers are wealthy;
They bring in their thousands or so.
But think of the frauds and deceptions;
Don't be in a hurry to go.
So, the farm is the safest and surest;
The orchards are loaded today.
You're King of the Air on the mountain,
And monarch of all you survey.
Better risk the old farm a while longer,
Though the profits come in rather slow.
Remember, you've nothing to lose, boys,
Don't be in a hurry to go.
Late 19th Century song found in a turn-of-the-century Grange song book.
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