Steven and I are learning first hand the work load increase that any small farm, grass fed dairy incurs. Steven wakes up one hour earlier to make his trek out to the paddock where the cows are grazing. (The walk gets progressively shorter since the rotationally grazing mob is on their way back to the barn. Every day, the walk is 30 feet shorter.) For the majority of dairies, they cut out this trek to the pasture by keeping the cows in sandy stalls or a dry lot and bringing them hay and grain.

Ivy is the cow. Milk is her game. She is a dehorned, black Irish Dexter cow and despite her eight years as “just a cow” she has become a quite trusty and calm milk machine. Steven halters her and leads her to the barn. He built a milking stanchion last year in hopes that one day he would be able to lead one of these dual purpose bovines up onto the raised platform to get a taste of this solar powered butter, cheese, ice cream, and milk. The crest of Ivy’s shoulder is just above my waste, so you could imagine the problems one may have when trying to milk udders that are so close to the ground.  We milk with a “short bucket” and a raised cow.

Day after day, Ivy gets more and more comfortable with her new roll. She knows where the stanchion is and will walk up into it and put her head through to chomp down on some delicious alfalfa cubes. I’ll admit, she liked my husband way more than me at first. She landed three kicks of about 30 tries when I first tried to take a turn at milking. Now when I see her shifting her weight, I rub the cow equivalent of a shin on her back leg until she calms and levels her weight back out. When you’re so “personal” when the cow and your head is totally in HER space, you can tell when she starts to have thoughts of kicking.

Milking is definitely a learned technique. You just have to learn it by doing it. Steven gets her going and the bucket gets all foamy. I tried and I was barely able to get a squirt out! Now, I am proud to say, that I can hum the melody to “I’m a Soul Man” to keep a rhythm and milk our three quarters of a gallon. Oh, yeah! Sure, she still gives Steven more milk, but my skills are growing.

When Steven milks both morning and evening, we are getting just over two gallons a day.  All this milk, what to do? What to do? Well make butter of course! Dexter milk has a fair share of cream. The lush alfalfa, clover, and orchard grass pastures make fine milk with plenty of cream. One quarter or more of each jar is cream after 24 hours. It takes longer to separate and float to the top than Jersey milk because the fat globules are smaller.

We’ve been exploring Gelato making. So far, we’ve had two batches that were C to F grades. This was due to our rookie mistakes. Now we are just pulling out two more batches, one vanilla and one Nutella. They are better but we may need to get a gelato maker as it seems that the speed of the paddles are slower when making real gelato.

For all of you who don’t know why one would go through the trouble to milk a cow I’ll just sum up some of the reasons. First, Ivy is 100% grass fed. Her milk has benefits similar to meat that is grass fed. The milk fat is healthy. Ivy is not fed “preventative” or sub therapeutic  antibiotics. So this is not in her milk. She is not given any bovine growth hormones to increase her production. Her body is cycling like a natural cow, a healthy cow, a womanly cow, as God designed. She’s giving the amount of milk that God intended her to give, not artificially over-producing for the sake of business profits.  Hormones come from the cow into her milk mainly in the fat molecules, so if there are added hormones (or naturally elevated estrogen due to the cow being pregnant) they are found in the cream & butter.  Ivy’s cream and butter, on the other hand, contain (probably) higher levels of CLAs and better ratios of EFAs.

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Anyone else have experience with a milk cow that you’d like to share? Anyone milking a Dexter? Anyone have any stories about Raw Milk benifites that you’ve experienced?

Hello, my name is Steven and along with Chris and our wives Geri and Natalie we are Franciscan Family Farms. Farming has always been in our family’s history and all around us but until this last year we haven’t really been farming. My wife and I have had horses for about 5 years and have become very interested in driving and working horses. This led to me attending Horse Progress Days with Chris (my brother in law) last summer. While there we became very interested in organic farming practices and trying to get the most out of your land after hearing an Amish organic dairy farmer and seeing all the new equipment for small farms.

Our great grandfather, Joe, bought 300 acres and farmed that land while raising 3 children. Two hundred of those original acres are still in the family and have been rented out, along with the farm house, for row crops since our grandfather, Cornel, retired. The farm is now slowly being used again by the new generation of family members. In 2006 we renovated the old farm house and my sister now rents it with her husband and little girl. For the last 5 years or so I have been using the barn and barn lot for boarding a few horses. Finally, this spring we have rented 10 acres from our uncles and my dad to start our endeavor.

We’ve fenced in these 10 acres and sowed seed for pasture because the grasses and legumes will be the foundation of the whole farm. We are striving for as natural of an environment for each of our animals as we can provide so that they can provide us with the healthiest meats, eggs, and maybe even milk. We have now acquired a small flock of chickens, three hogs, a Great Pyrennes puppy, and six Irish Dexter Cattle. The 100% grass fed beef from our Dexters will be the centerpiece of our farm but many other products are sure to come, as pork and eggs already have.

I hope that you enjoy following our progress as we grow and learn along the way. Feel free to click on any of the links on the right to learn more specifics about what we’re up to.