Spring has Sprung

Spring has sprung, and with it comes work, and a lot of it! I should have enjoyed the winter rest a little more, but I suppose being indoors all winter gets a little boring.

The cows are out on pasture and they seem to be so happy and content. They are coming up on milk fast too. We've had several more freshen (calve), and that adds to the bulk tank. Unfortunately, it's been mostly bull calves born, we really need more heifers.

It's been such a hectic week here. Monday we made a batch of cheese, and things went fairly well, until the hot water heaters decided to stop heating water for us. We use the hot water to circulate through coils in the vat to heat the curds and whey to cook it. Thankfully, we squeezed the last bit of hot water out of those tanks to just get it cooked to the correct temperature. But, that was 12 wheels of cheese added to our cooler.
Tuesday I spent the afternoon washing up, after we went to town to pick up our taxbooks from our accountant.
We've recently been featured in a brochure that was put together by the American Dairy Association (www.drink-milk.com ), that has been exciting, and customers at the farm market have enjoyed getting their copies. (We ended up with close to 4oo of them to hand out).
I spent yesterday morning in Zanesville at the oral surgeon's office. I'm scheduled to have 3 wisdom teeth out on Monday. Ick.... Thankfully it's at a time that Al is able to drive me home. I'll be driving over since my blood pressure is supposed to be normal, and his driving makes me nervous! And, I know where the place is at, only after going around the block about 3 times.
We made another batch of cheese today, that makes 2 for the week, which is enough to wear me out! It looks like we've made about 250 lbs. of cheese this week. I won't know exactly until later. The wheels are still in the press until about 10 ish... Was hoping to be done sooner, but that's just how it goes this time of year. I won't clean up until tomorrow afternoon, after the farm market, and before I mow yard. If I let it grow anymore we'll have to just make hay from the yard!
Our first baby chick hatched out today. I'll have to get some pics of it, it's a cutie! I had an old hen wanting to sit, so I figured I'd put some eggs under her and see if we could get some babies to come out. Out of six eggs, so far one showed up, hoping to see the rest pop out soon. The hen is such a good mama hen. She growls and clucks at anything that gets close to that little baby.
We are also proud to announce that we are now members of Ohio Proud. www.ohioproud.org We are so excited about this. We've thought about doing it for about a year now, and finally decided to sign up this month. So many benefits to being a member. A lot of marketing material and promotional stuff. I'm planning on going to a meeting on Thursday near Columbus. Seems I'm getting A LOT of travel time in lately.
On Friday we're planning on going to the Grand Opening celebration of a new specialty store. They handle our cheese, and this will be our first visit to their store.
So, since spring has sprung, the work has picked up along with other things going on. I guess it's good, but I'm sure tired right now. Will be glad to put this batch of cheese "to bed" and tuck in myself. Will be heading to Marietta around 6:30 in the morning...night night...