The first part of a day in June.

This morning when I stepped outside to talk to God, I looked at the sky, as I usually do, and quoted the first lines of Psalm 19.

“The heavens declare the glory of God,

And the firmament showeth his handiwork.”

Then I fell to worrying about whether I should do wash today or not. I almost went back in to check the weather on my phone.

But something held me back.

“You’ve been looking at the sky every morning for three or four months now,” it seemed to say, “What do you think will happen? ”

So I looked.

There were lumpy grayish clouds as far as I could see.

I wasn't sure what that meant.

So I prayed about it, along with all my other prayers and then went with my gut.

I filled the washer.

Then I started the the wine cap mushrooms frying for breakfast.

When we mulched the plum tree bed last fall, my husband spread wine cap spawn under the wood chips and this week they finally started producing.

Winecaps aren't quite as delicious in my opinion as shitakes, but they are on par with oysters, and super simple to grow.

My family is divided on mushrooms. The older segment enjoys them; the younger segment believes mushrooms were designed specifically to torture them.

I usually make two skillets of eggs, so I only put mushrooms on one of them.

I grated homemade cheese on both skillets. This particular cheese is a new recipe from a little book printed by some Amish called, “The Family Cow.”

If you ever want to feel liberated to try pretty much whatever you can think of with milk, I'd recommend it. There are multiple recipes everything.

Take cottage cheese, for example. One recipe tells you to make it by adding vinegar to heated milk, and another says “Let milk sour and pour boiling water on it and then drain off the whey” and yet another tell you to “make yogurt and then drain it for 12 hours” and a third says you should add gelatin to hot cream cool it and add yogurt and then incubate for six hours.

Hello? What do all of these crazy recipes have in common?

Um. . .not much. So apparently you just try things and then if they work you write them down and call them a recipe?

Ok, works for me!

Anyway, I tried a new recipe from the Family Cow and it's ok. I didn't follow it precisely and was in a hurry, so I should probably try it again. But it melts, so we are happy.

We also had yogurt and maple syrup because right now we are swimming in milk.

After breakfast and family devotions my daughter and I headed out to milk Willow the cow. (Who will, it appears, be the topic of another post.)

She was annoyed this morning and very vocal about it, but she didn't kick too much.

The sun was out by the time we got four and a half gallons and it was getting warm. I guess l was right about wash.

I took Willow into her pen while my daughter opened Taffy the calf’s pen. Taffy crowded up to her, eager for her collar so she could go to her mom. Willow headed straight to the water tank and downed five gallons of water then turned and headed back up to watch for Taffy.

Even though we cleaned her out pretty well, she always has more for Taffy who is growing at a phenomenal rate. They really do love each other and it's so cute.

Taffy stays with her for twelve hours and is in her pen twelve hours so we get some milk.

While my daughter finished with cow chores, I hauled the milk in. Hauling 36 pounds of milk for a quarter of a mile in one bucket isn't the most fun I've ever had. I need to see about getting another food grade bucket.

Then it was milk processing time. Strain the fresh stuff.

Skim cream from the day old stuff.

Make butter.

Try to figure out what to make with the skim milk.

I made cottage cheese today with one kettle of sour milk. It turned out pretty good and we had it for dessert at lunch along with strawberries.

But I discovered four more gallons of skim milk in the the fridge in the barn when I went out to get something out of the freezer.

That's about the last straw.

At least we don't have bees yet.

I don't think I could handle milk AND honey.