Construction Time Again

Things have been busy with engineers, contractors and friends all doing their part for the Milk Barn project in the last couple of weeks. We have just had all of the original milking stanchions for the 6x6 herringbone cut out and the room is now empty apart from the pit in the middle. We have had various quotes for everything from a complete knock-down and rebuild to a renovation and a refit.

So, in the next couple of weeks we hope to have workers on-site renovating the Milk Barn and turning it back into a milking facility once again. Once that is done we will definitely feel as though we are getting somewhere. We have been looking at various milking systems and are having DeLaval come down from Salem to talk to us in the next few days. I am also in the process of talking to potential buyers of our milk. Initially we will not be able to use all we produce in our first foray into actual raw milk cheesemaking and as the flock grows next year and into 2011 (we are now aiming for 150 ewes) we will have a large surplus of milk that we will need to market. For the time being we want to get comfortable with the milking process in conjunction with the animal husbandry. Jumping into everything at once is never a good idea. Our initial figure projections show that milking 50 ewes next year will turn us a small profit and that we should be able to increase the flock to 100 ewes and then 150.

We realized we were overly ambitious with our initial plans considering there was so much to learn with regard to sheep management, animal husbandry, milking and of course cheesemaking. The first two are an on-going thing and you are always learning something new, the last one is a rewarding process but in order to be successful at it you need to know the three steps before it, and so milking is next.

The lambs are doing extremely well and all are putting on weight and looking very healthy. The differences between the three breeds is now starting to become more evident in their little faces and soon we will be starting to wean them. In the coming weeks we have the haying to look forward to as well. The rain and the warm weather that has started to grace us has kicked the growth season off and it's hard to believe that we only have another 6 weeks before we're haying again. The warm weather will be a welcome break from the particularly wet few months we have just had and will give us the opportunity to finish the vegetable planting for this year.