December 28, 2011
A beautiful winter day at 38 degrees. The sun is shining, but the wind has quite a chill.
This week we have an observer/helper at the Creamery. Marlin Wampler is from Hagerstown, MD. He is involved with Agri-service in manufacturing cheese-making equipment. He felt if he learns some of the steps in cheesemaking, they might be able to improve little things on the equipment. They put him to work Monday, as one of the regular help wasn’t here. His wife and 3 of their children are with him. They are staying in a guest house and were at our house for supper last evening. (We’re from the old-school; we have dinner at noon and supper in the evening) The menu was ham (a Christmas gift from Homestead Creamery) potato stuffing, (some might call it dressing) green beans with a bacon white-sauce, home-canned pickles, cheese – who would’ve guessed – chocolate cake and caramel pudding. JR and Crystal were also there.
Yesterday we also had a farmer and his 3 sons from south of here coming to talk with Rufus and JR about what it takes to start making cheese. Rufus spent 3 hours with them. What does he get done in a day?
It’s been a busy week so far customer-wise. After this week it will likely slow down quite a bit. We’re running low on curds, good thing today is the day to make more. We make curds on Wednesday. The rest of the time we make cheese. As of now, we make cheese Mon., Tues. & Thurs., 2 batches each day. Wed. is one batch of curds. We take milk from 10 Amish farmers, picking the milk up 3 days a week. Next month we will add 2 more farms, so that probably means making at least one more batch of cheese a week.
We have had a very busy fall with orders to distributors. There are no orders here right now, will probably be slower the next 2 months. Actually, we don’t mind a bit of a break. On Thursday Rufus will make deliveries to stores and restaurants in the Des Moines/Ames area. Next week will be the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids route. We go on those routes every 4 weeks. That means making sure we have enough of cheese cut to fill those orders. I heard Sarah Louise was sick yesterday, hope she’s well by Thurs. for her regular day here.
Mark just came in. He went deer hunting after leaving here this morning and shot one. Has several tags to fill in late muzzle loader season. They issue extra tags to try to down-size the herds as we have an overabundance of deer in this area. It gives quite a bit of complaining from the farmers about crop damage.
We built on to the Creamery last fall/winter and are still trying to finish some of the small details. Rufus is designing a label holder for the cutting room. We’re also designing racks to hold things, and better set-ups for packaging cheese. Bit by bit we increase our efficiency.
If all goes as planned, we want to have a family get-together in Wisconsin for the New Year’s weekend. Rufus & I, Galen, Mark, JR, Crystal and baby Jeremy plan to leave Friday morning. (We can all fit in our minivan to go together.) We want to stop at Paul & Trudy Farra in Platteville, WI, for lunch. They are good friends, Paul used to be our nutritionist when we milked cows. We will be in Withee with our daughters and son-in-laws for the evening, taking them all out for pizza.
Saturday we’ll all spend the day at Randall & Jane Marie’s house. Crystal will take breakfast along for everyone and I’ll take dinner. I think Crystal is making biscuits & gravy, cinnamon rolls, juice. (And probably hot chocolate & coffee) I will have turkey, potato stuffing, baked corn, macaroni salad, pickles and Boston Crème Pie for dessert. Jane Marie & Rose will furnish Saturday supper, Sunday breakfast and dinner. We’ll head for home again Sunday afternoon so we’re all here for work Monday morning.
I’m glad we’re going to be there Saturday. That would have been grandson Kenneth’s 2nd birthday. Its 3½ months that we lost him. So it will be a special, yet sad day. I like the way Jane Marie explained it to son Leon Earl, 3½ years old. He was asking questions about the accident and wondered if Kenneth was crying when it happened? She told him, “No, and angel was there and said Come, Kenneth, let’s go home”. On Christmas day at church, we were singing “Angels from the realms of glory” when it hit me, Kenneth is singing with the angels in Heaven. Needless to say, I didn’t help finish the song.
Friday we’re closing the store at noon and be closed Saturday for New Year’s. Cody will take care of customers in the forenoon. He and Cleason will be here to do the usual Friday cleaning/maintenance jobs. It isn’t often we get a chance for the whole family to go away together.
Wishing each one a Happy and blessed New year.
Till next time,
Jane