Mama at the dairy, Fall

We had an interesting experience the other day. When we opened a gallon of the fresh milk we get at Dry Valley Dairy it did not taste good. None of us could tell if it was bad – as in spoiled – or if it was our taste buds so we drank about half the gallon before opening the second gallon we had bought. It had the same slightly off taste – not spoiled but definitely not good. So Mama went back to the dairy yesterday to ask about the milk and see if he would replace the gallons.

As she walked into the office there, which is just off the milking room, the owner was talking to a group of men. As it turned out he was telling them about the bad milk. Here is what happened. One day last week he hired a crew to trim fences and brush hog some places on his farm that had not been tended to that year. The farm was looking like is got a facelift as a result.

But the next morning he was finishing the chilling of the milk from the morning milking and noticed the batch smelled bad. He got a gallon from the pallet he had been filling that morning and opened it to taste it and it seemed okay but just to make sure he opened another – and it was awful. A third gallon was no better. So he dumped the entire batch from the chiller, unfortunately he had put several dozen gallons in the sales cooler already and could not be sure if he had gotten all of them back out to be discarded. Mama ended up getting two of the bad gallons. He replaced those gallons for us.

It seems that the cows had found something in the freshly cut grass and weeds of the cleared fence lines that was not normally part of their foraging in the pastures and whatever that plant was it had strongly flavored the milk. To remedy the situation he put the cows up in his lot and fed them good hay for a couple days and the milk returned to normal. He lost at least two milking’s work of product but that seemed to be the solution.

I suppose the same thing happens to nursing mothers. They eat something that strongly flavors the milk the baby is getting and we would never know it – but that poor baby would. Maybe, if the baby is not seeming to eat well on a particular morning it could be chalked up to the milk being flavored differently than they are used to. There is no good way to tell but it is something to consider.

It was hard to tell that yesterday was the first day of Fall. Mama has decorated accordingly but outside the house it still feels like summer. Days are a bit more mild with highs only into the mid-nineties but things are still and quite warm overall. Very few people I talk to are dreading the coming cool weather; most are lamenting its late return. I am psychologically ready for the cold weather but the farm is still not prepared yet.

Getting water to the animals during freezing conditions remains the biggest priority. We are still a couple months away from that but it will be upon us before we know it. Dust off the jackets, shake out the flannel shirts and start planning for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Ready or not, here it comes.