Cream Separator

I've spent the last couple days experimenting with my new cream separator. It is somewhat complicated as it has a lot of components. I was feeling rather proud of myself for getting the whole thing assembled and working on my own. However, I wasn't getting cream just milk out the milk spout. According to the manual if I wasn't getting cream out, there was a screw that needed adjustment to make the cream thinner, so that it would come out. I readjusted the screw and took the whole machine apart, washed and reassembled it four different times and was still not getting cream out. Finally I asked Dustin to see if he could figure out what was wrong with it. Well after an hour or so we had cream. I hadn't been putting enough milk through! Why didn't I think of that? I took several pictures but my camera battery was dead this morning so I'll post photos later. I'm having cream in my breakfast tea as I write this, and I'll be having some in a cup of coffee in a while. We need to do some more adjustments so that the cream isn't quite so thick. After the cream was in the fridge all night it was too thick to pour, I had to scoop some out with a spoon.

We aren't even milking daily yet, but Rose has been extra full and needing relief. Two nights in a row I milked her until her udder wasn't painfully full, leaving a moderately full looking udder behind, and each night I got about six cups of milk. We will start milking both Rose and Xoe daily in another week. Once we are milking all three does once a day I'm guessing we will be getting about three gallons of milk a day which is way more than we can use or store. It is illegal in Alaska to sell milk, raw or pasteurized, goat or cow. It is illegal for milk to leave ones property unless it is dyed green, has charcoal in it and is labeled for animal consumption only. I would have to operate a grade A certified dairy and then I would be able to sell pasteurized milk, never raw milk, unless Alaskan laws change. (More on milk legislation in future posts) It takes about a gallon of milk to get a pint of cream. It makes sense that we have our own milk so why purchase pasteurized cream cheese, sour cream, heavy cream and ice-cream at the store when we can make it ourselves. This is one way we will be able to convert our large quantities of milk into dairy products that take up less space and should be superior in quality and health benefits to anything we can purchase.