2013 Yellow Springs Farm Day Five -Rosalie

Day 5, April 12: Yellow Springs Farm

Today was our last day working at Yellow Springs Farm. I was in the cheese room the whole day with Al. Being in the cheese room was a perfect way to escape the rainy weather!

In the cheese room, we began with the first steps of making cheese. We were making cheese that would be aged, so we had to first pasteurize the milk. Once the milk was pasteurized, we added bacteria and rennet and waited for the milk to form into curd. We then cut the curd and let the whey drain. Finally, we put the curd into molds and put weights on the molds to press the whey out of the curd.

There was a lot of time during this process of making cheese where we were waiting for the milk to be heated, or the curd to form. In this time, i washed a bunch of dishes. I also package a few different kinds of cheese and made some samples!

Thank you for the wonderful experience, and the delicious cheese! I hope I'll be back to visit soon!

2013 Janell Wysock Day Four -Juliana

Another weaving day! Today we started out by packing in the weft so that the fabric was nice and tight.

We then continued. The photo above is of me packing it down again after having wove for a little while. More weaving! We took a break towards the end to work on the big looms!

More excitement in the day was when Diane Roka came in to draw Janell in her work place. She loves drawing artists doing their work, from music to pottery! She said she would be back the next day to draw Pia and me!

2013 Sweet Salvation Truffles Day Four -Annie

The first thing we did today was we cut caramel that Cheryl had made into squares. Unfortunately, something had happened during the cooling of the caramel so the center was a little bit like toffee but luckily, Lisa and I got to take this pieces home. We then melted milk chocolate and dipped the caramel squares in. while one of us was dipping the other would sprinkle on some sea salt with a spoon. It was really fun and they tasted delicious. 

The next thing we did was we took the sugar free coco powder that we had ground up the day before and we mixed it into a batter. Because of the bitter taste of the chocolate we had to add some sugar substitutes like Stevia and Agave. It tasted better with the sweetness but still, to me it was very rich. After lunch, we then vacuum sealed our raspberry truffle samples. Then after that, we put the sugar free chocolate mixture into pastry bags and then we squeezed the chocolate out into truffle sized lumps. We produced about two trays. Once we had finished, we boxed up some chocolates for a farmers market that Cheryl goes to. 

2013 Yellow Springs Farm Day Four -Nick

Today we arrived at 7:30 A.M. to help again with milking. We got off to a late start but  milking went flawlessly. It was an easier process then the first time because we knew what we were doing. We improved our amount by 20 lbs. over the first times results. After we were finished milking we headed down to the the pasture to muck out the goats stalls. We also fed and watered the goats while we were down there.

When we were finished, we headed over to Hollow Farm. We fed the very eager, screaming kid while we were down there we also fed the goats hay and brought the kids outside. Before we left to go to lunch, we did a little mucking out and then got some bales of hay and straw to take with us.

After lunch, we took care of the goats down in the pasture. We clipped toenails, shaved there udders and finished cleaning up around the pasture.