BUTTER ~ FOUR years in the making

6:45 in the morning. I don't think you can see anything. Does that help? Anyway, I'm walking by the path. I believe Arun is done. Did a really good job on this. What do you think? Boy, this, this front yard is really starting to shape up. Arun, you did a good job over there, buddy.

Thank you.

You never stop working, do you?

Yeah, I'm thinking because time is running, I need to plant some seeds.

Okay, what are you going to plant?

Oh, there's so many things like, you know, green onion, broccoli, lettuce, cilantro, and beetroot. No, sorry, what do you call the, you know, the red one? I think radish, tomatoes. Yeah, chili, green chili from India.

That's cool.

And green pepper. So many things. Okay, I want to fill this up.

Good, I can't wait to see it. Gave Arun and Amy a garden spot here in our yard. Good friends of ours, good friends of ours. If I— if they had land and I needed a little garden spot, they would give it to me. Have y'all set up for Bear? Yeah, he's coming in tonight.

Okay, we got him some hay and some water.

You see, Violet is finally not keeping up with us both. She's starting to give 3/4 of a gallon instead of a gallon at each milking. And so I think it's time. I think it's time. Bear has been on Violet 24/7. We've been getting a gallon at each milking, sometimes a gallon and a half. Now we're going to need to cut it back a little bit. Bear will be separated from her at night and He'll get the milk all day, but he won't get the milk at night, and we'll get that milk. That's what you call calf sharing, and we think it's one of the most humane ways of doing this. If you're buying milk from the store, chances are that calf never gets to nurse on mom, separated immediately. Hey little man, hey little man, how's it going little man? Wrong way, Violet. People ask me if I learned anything on the tour. Learned all kinds of stuff, especially about cows. We used to leave mama and the calf in the stall together overnight and would separate them in the stall, but I learned from Dennis you don't do that. You just keep the calves in a stall. Why? Because they eat less hay. You got to have food for the cows 24/7, so it's a lot cheaper, makes a lot more sense to just put the calf up and put mama back out on the pasture. Ella, here's your chance to pet Bear. Oh, we've just milked Violet. I'm guessing almost a gallon. I'm gonna— let's see what would you give tomorrow keeping Bear off of you tonight. You all right? You ready for it, Violet? Boys, did you get, uh, Bear some water and hay?

Come on, go on.

Let's see if she's gonna be cool with going back out without Bear. Come on, come on, honey, come on. She came right in. I don't even think she'll notice for a while because Bear just runs all over the place anyway. First, let's check on Bear. Hey buddy, you doing okay, buddy? Yeah, the kids took good care of you. In my excitement, I forgot the bucket for milking. Back out here. The good news is It's starting to get lighter. The bad news is I didn't have my cooler in there to fill up with soapy water. Let's be honest, sometimes what delays you on the homestead is forgetting stuff, losing stuff, and having to find it. We talk about being too blessed to be stressed. I saw an Instagram video from a guy named Gary V. And the first— I think the title of it is 4 Trillion to One. You know what, let's let Bear out. He can go with me. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Now I realize he's gonna beat me to her, start nursing. Come on, buddy, she's down here. Oh, that's the first bellow I've heard all night. Trust me, she's been Happy as a clam out there. Oh no, I shouldn't have let him out yet. He's ready to eat, ain't he? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! I just wanted to let him go. Oh, come on! I knew they'd be excited to see each other. But no, seriously, she was calm all night. Hey, come on, come on. How much milk do you think is going to be in there? It's going to be pretty much— come here, little man. Come here, come here. We'll get you out in a second, okay? Look, caught up to him before we even started. She is really pulling out. Is he stuck? Come on, come on, buddy. Come on, take some nerves off your mother. Here, let her see you. Let her see you. Let her see you. He must have hit that fence. There he is. There he is, Violet. Come on, go show yourself. Go show yourself. I need a collar for that boy. Thanks so much for the morning milk. We'll go out in just one second. Back to the 4 trillion thing. 4 trillion to 1, that's your odds of being born. Now that's something to be thankful for, because we've— if we're here, if we're just here, we've overcome unbelievable, impossible odds to be here. All right, we don't want you to knock this over. All right, you ready, sweetie? You want to reunion with your son? Come on. Reunion! You guys are fun together. Let y'all two have your moment. Thank you, thank you.

You like that? You like that?

Look, I just gave him new grass. You can see the line there. I love it when they just cross it a foot and start eating. Not only is Violet an excellent milker, standing still, giving a lot of milk— you're an excellent mama. There's fresh green grass over there and you're standing here letting him nurse you. Bless you. Good for you, Violet. Self-care, honey. Self-care. It's a good mama right there, conflicted being between self-care and taking care of her offspring. But since we're at the end of this pasture, you know what that means? We gotta move her probably up there. It's gonna be tricky because we're gonna have to get Stud Muffin across the road. Establishing this homestead one field at a time. I got a reveal for you. Open that lid.

This is the first time we separated.

How much you guess that is? I had originally guessed a gallon and a half, but I think 2 gallons. What the heck? I'm spilling it.

I think that it's just the jelly.

I've never had this much milk in my life. Have you?

We did one time with Willow.

Oh shoot, oh shoot, it's gonna fill up. Oh, maybe I'll be all right. Well, just making a terrible mess. I'm sorry.

It's like when I do it, I make it—

I filled that one jar too much.

I make a terrible mess when I do it. I have to— can I get it on the floor?

Really? Oh yeah, it's gonna make it. 2 gallons. Good morning, buddy. How are you? Hmm? Hmm? You liking that applesauce? Not so sure. You're not so sure. Excited to share more goodies from the Great American Farm Tour. Just in case you've been hiding under a rock and haven't heard about this, we're doing a giveaway in celebration of the Great American Farm Tour. Featuring lots and lots of goods of the farms we visited. Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute. Cool. This is the greenhouse. Oh my word, it's true, there's bananas. The Tropico Greenhouse. How high are we, Jerome? I climbed an awful lot to get here. Well, we are at 7,200 feet. The forest garden greenhouse. If anybody knows how to do a forest garden greenhouse, it's Jerome. He's growing bananas at 7,200 feet in Colorado. Is that unbelievable, Mr. Brown? Can you say unbelievable? No, he ain't about to go there. Oh, goodies, goodies, goodies! I love this stuff. Came into blueberry paradise.

Look at this. I think we're gonna have to get some of this because this is blue smoothie powder, and that's good for us because we don't necessarily have the freezer space to keep blueberries, but then we can add this to our smoothies. And the kids can— they love blueberries in their smoothies.

Oh man, we're just gonna stock up. Blueberry tea, Tiaga blueberry tea, and she sent even more. And this is blueberry bark. Uh, Rebecca pretty much lived on blueberry bark while on the road. We went and saw these kind, kind folks up in Maine. Henhune Farm. Doug Wharton, uh, Henhune Farm. We're up, uh, in Ohio. Andy. Andy? Yeah, you must be with him. Yeah, you guys have a look. The workshop guys, they go around and teach workshops on how to butcher pigs, lambs. We got them coming in the fall for our lambs. They sent some body butter, the now famous Bugs Not Drugs shirt. Hey, Mr. Brown, would that look good on me? Would that look good on me? I think that'd look good on anybody. Primal Pastures has style. You guys want to help me push this thing real quick? All right, let's do it. We gotta push really hard. They are professional market farmers, totally normal people, forsook it all for better food and started a great business, really excelling. That's it for the giveaway today? You're done? Okay, good, good. We're gonna make breakfast here in a little bit, okay? The reason I'm so diligent about making sure we get enough milk is because— what's in that, guys? Do you know? Hmm, you'll have to wait a second. We're gonna eat our breakfast and then we're gonna reveal that and try it out for the first time. I was making breakfast and looked out the window. You see, that's a problem. Where's Violet? Okay, Violet's still in the pen. That's good. Let's get her tied in the pen so she doesn't leave. I can see the problem. The fence is down way over there. Violet, on the other hand, is in no hurry to leave. She's over here happy at the water. We're just gonna We're just gonna make sure she stays. I don't think she will. Just to make sure you stay. He's already making his way back. It looks like the gate didn't get shut, so power wasn't going to this fence. Oh look, he's definitely coming back. He's trying the direct route. I don't think he remembers he got out down there. Come on, buddy, let's go back. Come on, let's go back. He gets out and he gets so spastic. No, where are you going? You're crazy. You got it, straight there. You got it, come on, come on. Why is he going that far? He's going. Where is he going? No! Maybe I can go put the fence down over here though. He's right there. I'm gonna put my head down just to not threaten him. Try this way, stud. Here, let's pull this— pull the fence up here. Here we go. See, come on, she gap. See, he recognizes this gesture. Come on, come on, big guy. Not funny. Gotta make sure these fences stay on. He had knocked it down at the corner. I had gotten— I got the corner back up. It might have even fallen. I think I figured out where the power wasn't connected. Let's see if that fixed it. Bam! It's hitting real hard right there. That little electric fence, only a psychological barrier. If it doesn't stay hot, they figure it out. I can hear it clicking. Hear that? Bam! Let's try one more spot down here at the end where they are, make sure power's getting to them. Yay! I need to put this in my apron right there. Jonah, before we use this, let's go get all the milk in here. Holy smokes, how many gallons is that? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and a half. You can have 1 and a half gallons for your chickens.

Which ones are the oldest?

Actually, actually, we're gonna get plenty of skim milk here. Let's save that for your chickens. You have to heat it up to 100 degrees, so let's put it in here. Can you not open the lids?

I can only open these ones.

Did you shake it first to make sure all the cream got off the walls? Okay, yeah, that's better. See, we lost too much cream on the walls there.

You cannot get a spatula.

Let's go ahead and get it heated. Turn it on about a 3. You don't want to heat it too fast. Is it too big? No, it'll be fine. How much cream do you think that's gonna be?

Um, I'm gonna say probably half of that. 10— okay, from what I've read, 10 gallons of milk is 1 gallon of cream.

So that's 5 gallons.

So this will be a half a gallon of cream.

That means one of these jars can be filled up with cream. What are we gonna do with all that cream?

Butter. We're probably gonna make some milk ice cream too. Oh, look how it floats!

Oh look, I like your floating thermometer, beauty. It's 40 degrees right now, Jonah. It's got a long way to go.

That means that it was in the fridge. Fridge was doing its job.

Mom, is he supposed to stir this? Okay, yeah, there you go. Just do careful.

Like this?

Yeah, because the stuff on the bottom is warmer. This thing's got like a million pieces. You have to wash every single one of those things.

So the last separate crust cream separator I did—

Can you tell me about the cream separator you got?

What do you want to know?

What's so funny? People want to know. I mean, I know, but come on. People are probably thinking, what cream separator did she get? I'm dying to know.

I got one that had the most stainless on it.

That wasn't $4,000.

I know there was one that was like really expensive that was all stainless. I got the— it really wasn't all that affordable, but I got the most affordable one.

But neither is buying your own butter and cream, sour cream.

So basically, I didn't want to get one that had aluminum in it.

Okay.

So, oh yeah, I guess that had the most stainless.

I guess you could get one that—

this one still has some aluminum on it, but it said that the milk doesn't touch that part.

How much was it?

It was $1,200.

Okay. Hey, the price we pay for healthy food. We're not going to go out there and move that cow every day. Calf share. And then not get, not get a good cream separator.

Well, I should share that I recently had a heavy metal test done and I had high aluminum, which was one of the reasons I wanted to stay away from aluminum, because we can't determine where I picked up all that aluminum because we don't use aluminum pots, we don't use aluminum— like, I don't use aluminum stuff. So that's why I was just I was like, you know, I'm gonna be extra careful because obviously I'm struggling with it.

So $1,200 is a lot better than $4,000. Yeah, but we got to do it the best we can. So she got the Milky. I'll link it. How about that?

It's the 130.

FJ 130. FJ 130.

Man, that looks big.

I know, if you're in Dennis's—

I need it. No, Dennis's is huge.

Oh, okay.

I think—

no, I think You're right.

But anyway, anyway, I didn't want to get such a big one, but to go to get stainless, like, it's, it's difficult. Companies make a small stainless homestead cream separator. How hard could it be, really?

Okay, anyways, all right, off your stainless steel crazy lady kick.

So I'm gonna— I need to put some hot water in here.

Oh no.

The great plug they told me it was.

This— the Austrians. I don't know. We do have a European— we do have an adapter somewhere. Maybe it's buried out here. Hey, don't cry yet. Looky here.

Is that the red?

Remember when we went to England? Big Papa came through for you. Well, let's see if it works.

It's working, right? I need to get more in there. Sorry, I'm scatterbrained.

You're in the zone. Look, I don't have to run to Home Depot. I mean, I don't have to run to Best Buy. And look, we're almost to 100 degrees. That would have stunk. Smells like a rocket ship about to take off. Becky, is it about to take off? Where's the water?

Well, I haven't turned it on yet. I'm waiting for this to turn.

Oh my gosh, that's not good. I'm glad we tested with water.

I don't think that was supposed to happen.

Well, no, it wasn't supposed to happen. No way.

Okay, I have to say, there's horrible directions. There's actually no directions of how to put it together, so we watched a YouTube video.

Apparently they didn't say anything about water, but I'm glad we did that. They did.

They did say something about water.

Trying again?

I guess I'm just gonna see if there's any more water in there because apparently there is. Yeah, we're gonna try it again.

Okay, what'd you do?

I just reassembled it. I like how you have no faith that it's not going to come out of here.

Oh, oh, you're moving it over here. It's hopeful. And I'm moving it over here for the emergency.

Here, please put the towel there.

Slowing down. Is that normal?

I have no idea.

Becky, working. Whatever you did, it's working, Mr. Brown. Good job. Well, we got more water eventually off the side.

Yes, more water. So I went back to the directions and looked again, and I had mis— mis— mis—

there's two zeros.

This is supposed to be lined up.

Do you think that's lined up enough? Oh yeah, I'm going to have to help you. I really Screw that on.

It's hard. Homesteading is hard. No wonder people just would rather buy their food in the store, you know.

But then what you find out is you can't buy this stuff.

I know, I can't buy this in the store, and then I don't know how it was produced and all these things.

Because look at this, this has taken us all morning. It's almost lunch, literally all morning. Okay, we thought this was gonna take maybe an hour.

Well, first time always takes a long time.

Wait, do you gotta let that warm up?

Yeah, it's, it's off. The stopper is off.

Oh, it's green. Go! I'm going. Oh, okay. I'm so confident I'm not even putting a bowl in front of that hole. What happens when we follow instructions?

Well, in my defense, these instructions are horrible.

And about this point, that's when we get stuff coming out here. I don't feel nothing but air. How are we gonna get all that milk over here?

You're gonna have to bend it over here.

Okay. It's heavy and almost overflowing.

Okay, put it—

let's go ahead and put it to the right.

Sure. Flirting into the— yeah, into the, uh—

go ahead. Oh boy, it's already wanting to come through. Oh my, that's fast acting. We're doing it, honey. Look at those tiny teeth. Just makes it all worth it right here.

Oh boy, it's really going fast.

Now wait, what are we going to do? Just switch this out?

Yeah, with that.

All right. White, yellow. I will.

10 gallons.

So what we have here is a miracle. Well, 1 gallon of cream for 5 gallons.

I will say this, we did do a higher— what is it called— a higher cream volume and smaller cream density. Okay, that's what we did. So we have— we don't have a very dense cream.

Okay.

I wonder if it's half and half. We made half and half.

Oh, shoot.

I don't know. I mean, because this is like, it's all a big experiment.

So we didn't make butter? Yeah, I think we did. We'll be able to make butter with this or not?

I don't know. We're gonna have to just see.

Okay. All right. Skim milk, useless to humans.

Smell.

Smell. Good for chickens. Soak your feet in it, please. I just want to pinch myself right now. A gallon of cream?

That's kind of crazy.

We're gonna make a half a gallon of butter. This is happening. Like, we got a family cow before, but she never produced like this. I think we did the right thing too by milking her for those first 3 weeks. With Bear on her 24/7, that really made her like bring in some milk. She's going on ahead. Oh boy, splashy.

Okay, I need to get a towel.

If it ain't one problem, it's the next.

It's just, it's just learning this whole process. It's kind of crazy.

But you know what, chances are you shouldn't even be here, Becky. I talked about that earlier.

Did you?

Except I messed up. It's not portrait It's 400 trillion. Yeah, to one. How long do you do that?

Until it makes it butter.

Is it on a butter setting? What kind of setting is it on? So you just put too much liquid in there?

Um, no, it's pretty splashy. The cream dense velocity isn't enough. I mean, this is all a big experiment.

So do you think it's gonna make butter?

I do.

It is. I hear less. I hear less liquid busting about.

Here, come over here. Right here.

Oh yeah. Oh boy.

We have some. Is that stuffed butter but not the milk?

So we had that setting on way too—

too liberal. That's what I'm saying. We must have made half and half.

So is it gonna make butter eventually, or are we—

I have no idea. I'm gonna maybe drain off some of the milk so it's not so splashy.

Draining off a lot of liquid. Boy, that didn't—

Yeah.

Is it not working still?

No, it is. I think it did separate. I think that it's because the cream was warm, because we didn't— because it's not like breaking.

After you strained off a lot of that milk, look what you have.

I know.

Is that it?

Well, I put this—

is that butter?

I put this in the fridge. Yeah, this is better.

Oh, so that helped when you cooled the— when you cooled the cream, you were able to make a more consistent—

yeah, I think I'm gonna put it back in the fridge.

So this is— are you gonna put all this back in the fridge? Yeah, that's buttermilk.

It's still kind of, um, yeah, that's buttermilk.

Okay, we did it. Yeah, we made butter.

We did make butter.

What are you doing now?

So now I'm just taking all of the butter out of here.

Yeah.

And I'm going to rinse it with water.

Yeah.

Get all the milk out of it, and then I'll put it in a—

will it be solid?

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty solid.

Okay.

I'm gonna put it in the— once I put it in the fridge.

Water right on top of that, huh? Yeah. You're not gonna lose any of it? Oh wow.

Well, you probably released them, but unless someone knows a better way—