I know I know. I should have posted an update a week ago. To be honest, I kept thinking the call would come that “Milk is ready!” any minute.
Kind of how a mom shouts “Dinner is ready!” and all the kids come running.
It has been sadly quiet.
Jeanette has been in routine contact with the dairy farm and because they had so much going on (births, training, testing of milk, getting back into milking, plus normal farm work) I’ve purposefully stayed out of it. Having someone constantly tapping you on the shoulder asking if you are ready yet, when you are DESPERATELY trying to get ready, isn’t the most helpful thing.
Here is what I know now.
It has been babyapalooza at the dairy farm. Baby goats have been hitting the ground like crazy and at this point the babies are everywhere.
The normal process is some of the babies are sold to other farmers who want these milk goats for their own herds. When they are sold, that leaves mom with lots of milk for the remaining goats and some left over for us.
All the farmers who are supposed to come and get their baby goats have been delayed. The goat pens aren’t ready. Their truck broke down. It is too wet. The sky isn’t blue. Whatever you can think of, it has happened, and of course all at once.
Cow milk was always scheduled to be a few weeks from now. Our first cow to calve isn’t due for a couple of weeks so that is on schedule, but not happened yet.
Milking is happening. Mostly by the babies, but milk has been sent out for testing to our normal lab to make sure everything is as perfect as it is supposed to be.
Our estimate of when I’ll be picking up milk is now the week of March 9th. And again that will be limited supply until things ramp up.
So that is the bad news.
The good news is, once we get rolling in milk, we should have more milk than ever coming in. We also will not dry off our dairy cows this year (actually we will, but there is overlap of other cows so we’ll never run dry this winter).
So in summary, our promise of February has been broken. It is outside our control (other farmers not doing what they said) but regardless we have to deal with the results. I’m sorry for the false start, but we are working diligently to get milk in as soon as possible.
With that said, we spent from 7:30 to 1pm this Tuesday loading ONE cow onto the trailer to go to the processor. Normally this takes less than an hour. Heck I’ve loaded the entire trailer full in 15 minutes before. It was so muddy that we just couldn’t get anything done. So maybe the other farmers aren’t just making excuses. I want to think that anyway.