October's nearly gone

Here we are moving into the last week of October, and I have only written four pieces for the month!  With Roy here, a lot more is getting done, but it seems that for every job that gets done, two pop up in its place.

Kayla is working with me in the soap room one day a week, only last week it was two days!  We are nearly caught up with soap, and this week I plan on trying her out on some office help.  That is now where I am the farthest behind.  The tags on the soap board nearly covered it - one goes up every time I see that I need to make more of a particular soap.  It takes five weeks to cure, so staying on top of it is important.  We are down to only four batches needing to be made this week, and Roy wants to learn how it's done.  So hopefully we will get them all onto the curing racks by Wednesday.  Then there are a few lotions to do, and some herbal remedies.

We are butchering one of our cows that failed to settle (that means get pregnant).  If they can't have calves, then they don't give milk, and they are not salable.  Our shareholders appreciate getting meat from animals that have been treated humanely, are strictly grass fed, and are organic.  So we will sell the meat to the shareholders for considerably under the value for organic grass-fed beef.

At auction, most of the animals will sell for less than they would if you are shopping for just one cow, so I set out to see if I could purchase at least one cow for replacement, and maybe even two.  These were registered Guernseys, the breed I want to increase in our herd, and would probably have had to pay at least what we will get for our meat for just one cow.   I was fortunate enough to be sitting next to a guy who raised and milked Guernsey cows for 50 years, and so he pointed me to some good values - cows a little older, maybe not such high, perfect udders, but good milking records and very high butterfat.  The two cows cost what we will get for the meat from our one cow.  They arrived last night and are getting to know the other cows already. 

I was going over the records of the two I bought last night and discovered that I bought grandma and granddaughter.  One of the girls freshened in July, and we are already milking her.  The other was due to freshen yesterday, so very soon we will have copious amounts of milk from her as well - and all that butterfat!  Guernseys give this lovely golden milk with very high butterfat, and are the breed with the highest A2 content.  You can read more about A2 milk here if you are interested: 
A1 - A2 Milk information   And some of the science stuff here:  Science behind A1 A2 milk

Pictures of new cows later.  I need to get on with my day.  I'm going to bake some braided oatmeal and whole wheat bread today.  Sean and Roy are getting spoiled for the good stuff - no more day-old bread store bread for them!