If you’re a dairy farmer, no matter the size of your herd, it’s likely that the majority of your milk stays just that – liquid milk.
But the spring flush is a real thing for cows, sheep and goats. So whether you keep your livestock’s milk for yourself or you sell it, what do you do when there’s more “white gold” than you’re used to?
The easiest (and some might say tastiest) solution is to make some soft cheeses. Making your own ricotta or cream cheese is fairly simple. To make ricotta, all you need is milk, some kind of acid (like vinegar or lemon juice) and salt, according to Bon Appetit. You can find their recipe here. Cream cheese just has a slightly different approach to those three ingredients – and Southern Plate shared their recipe here.
Obviously, making milk-derived products for your home knows no bounds. As we’ve talked about before at Country Culture, you can make your own butter with your bare hands (or toned arms). You can make your own ice cream. You can even use milk in place of water in almost any recipe, but especially in homemade breads.
But you can also use excess milk to feed other mouths on your homestead too. Pigs, chickens and even dogs can appreciate a little bit of milk as a supplement in their diets. The high protein content in milk is extremely useful for growing pigs. However, you should know that chickens are slightly allergic to dairy products, so only give them milk in small amounts at first to observe how they react to it.
You can even feed your plants some milk. By watering milk down so it’s 1:1 water, you can spray it directly on leaves or pour the solution around plants like you would with water. Since milk is full of calcium, protein, vitamins and sugars, it can help plants grow and produce better. Studies have also found that spraying plants with a milk mixture weekly drastically helps prevent diseases due to anti-fungal properties.
(It should be noted that you should never pour 100% milk on your plants. It does not do their bodies good.)
If you still have too much milk, you can always freeze some for later in the year – during the hottest parts of summer, for example, when dairy production usually drops.
It’s true that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, but with milk, all you need to take advantage of it are some creative solutions.
