Chipping and Mulching Prunings, Mock Roquefort

Finally, the 25 breeders across the river have commenced calving with one birth this morning. It was still groggy enough to let me put on both ear tags. In this herd we use a letter to denote the year of birth and this is H. The number that follows is from the NLIS (National Livestock Identification System) tag and in this case 101. Only hours old this little heifer now has both ears pierced. The schedule on the wall calls for commencement from 12th July 2013 but they or the bull  obviously didn't see that calendar. Although the other two herds have cows who look close they have not progressed.

Sunday has traditionally been the day we make cheese and having collected milk yesterday evening that tradition continued. The cream had settled and since the choice was a double cream blue i.e. mock Roquefort 9 litres of milk was bottled via a syphon from the bottom of the stainless vat. As usual 4 different starters were added plus some blue mould. Ended up with a few more rounds than was originally planned but it won't go to waste. The kitchen sink is a bit crowded with the Havarti still in progress but what's new.

Small rounds of double cream blue cheese

During the rennet setting time the mulcher was in progress and managed to get the Orchard pruning's mulched and into the NZ compost that was started last week. The cheese then needed some attention and that consumed the couple of spare hours before afternoon herd checks. There is still the Elderflower pruning's to be cleaned up which should provide almost enough mulch to finish off the NZ compost. But that will wait another day or two.