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Friday, July 01, 2011

Clabbered Milk for the garden?

KC and Mom
Honey (one of our milk cows) and her calf KC.

The strangest thing has happened this spring here. After all these months...two years maybe?...of not being able to get milk to clabber so I can make cheese with it, (without adding some buttermilk to culture it anyway) I've been having it clabber on me this year.

If you don't know what clabbered milk is...it's kinda like yogurt, in fact DH tells a story about his Aunt eating clabber like we would yogurt or ice cream today. It has to be made with raw milk...store bought milk won't work, and is made by leaving the raw milk out for 24 hours (or sometimes longer), till it's thick like yogurt. Yes it's still ok to use...raw milk doesn't spoil like store bought milk does...usually anyway. Personally I think yogurt tastes better...sweeter...but clabber is good for making some kinds of cheese, and the animals love it. :)

This spring, I've had the milk clabber when I didn't want it to clabber...even the milk I store for every day use in the door of the fridge has clabbered on me...IN THE FRIDGE! Granted we don't use milk for cooking or drinking everyday, so it can sit there for a week or sometimes longer (if I forget to refresh it) but HOW does it clabber in the fridge, when I could never get it to ANYWHERE in or out of the fridge before?

I thought it was just because we didn't have the air going at first (since it was broke) but then I found it had done it in the fridge too, so figure that can't be the reason.

Course I still haven't gotten around to making the cheese DH's Aunt gave me the recipe for, that was one of the biggest reasons I wanted to learn to clabber milk...but hopefully one of these days I'll get around to it. LOL Now at least maybe I'll be able to manage the cottage cheese I make, without having to get a culture or some store bought buttermilk to start the clabber with.

I have still had a little trouble now and then, it seems when I REALLY want it to clabber, it can still decide not to, but a lot of the time there is no trouble getting it to now. It's just so strange...WHY did it all of a sudden start working for me?

The only thing I can think of, that could have an impact, is I've started making Kefir and Kombucha this spring...so maybe those two things are putting good bacteria in the air, and giving the milk what it needs to clabber for me now.

Course we will see if it continues throughout the summer...and into the winter. Maybe it did have something to do with not having the AC on...I guess only time will tell.

Zuchinni Plant

Whatever the cause...we have clabbered milk now, that we have to find something to do with...if we don't get it right out to the plants the day I take it out of the fridge. (There is only SO much, that the chickens, Yani & the cats can eat. LOL) Soooo DH tried putting some of it around the plants, since we know watered down milk is good, figured maybe the clabber would be too.

I think they like it!! We lost a tomato plant earlier this spring, and when we really got out in the garden working on it, saw two more were looking kinda sickly. DH said he gave them some clabbered milk (since that's what he had at the time) and they have started looking lots better. They still aren't as big and bushy as the other three, but in time maybe they will get that way.

The other day I saw him dumping some around the hills of cucumbers, zucchini & cantaloupe. The plants were still kinda small, and didn't seem to be growing as fast as I wanted them to, but since he gave them some of the clabbered milk they have started growing faster...especially the zucchini (pictured above).

Who knew the garden would like clabbered milk, not just the watered down milk we tried on the trees last year! :) I'm thinking we need to figure out how to give some to the rest of the garden, so maybe it will go wild too! LOL

Peas

I did pick my first thing from the garden yesterday! I saw a pea pod that looked fatter like it was about ready to be picked, and couldn't help myself...I had to pick it and open it and try them raw!! LOL Yummm, DH and I made short work of that little bunch of peas, and there are several more that are close, so hopefully in the next week, we will have our first home grown peas from our own garden, for supper! :)

I may not like gardening, but it's so fun to eat what we grow so maybe I can at least learn to tolerate it...maybe. *giggle*

I'm just thankful we have something that will maybe help keep the garden growing, so hopefully we can actually harvest things from it this year! I'm not sure we will have enough tomatoes, I should have planted more of them...but now I know for next year. LOL (I tried planting some tomato seed right in the ground, but haven't seen them coming up yet...so am thinking they aren't going to.) Hopefully we can get some from somewhere else, if I have time to do a bunch of canning...will have to see how much money we can find in the next two or three months.

Anyway...the garden is still alive...and growing, with the help of our clabbered milk, so that in itself is a miracle to my way of thinking! *giggle* Especially knowing how black (instead of green) my thumb can be at times. LOL

Praise God for his help with the garden so far! :-))

1 comment:

  1. Clabbored milk... Learn something new every day!

    ReplyDelete

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