A Million Ways in Which Your Life is Easier Than Strictly Necessary

We are making about four pounds of butter every other day, which is almost twice as much as we eat. This is good. We maximize our butter making during the spring months, when the pasture is peaking and the cream is highest in vitamins and minerals. You can see it in the butter; it is more than yellow.

We churn by hand. I like it, except when I don’t, which honestly isn’t very often. Maybe if I’m in a hurry. Making butter means doing lots of dishes: The jars we store the cream in (it takes about 6 quarts of cream to make 4 pounds of butter), the churn itself, the bowl we use for washing the butter to get the remnants of buttermilk out of it. From churning to clean-up, it takes me about 40 minutes to make four pounds of butter, maybe a little less if I’ve got some good tunes on the hi fi.

We’re in a cloudy spell right now, so our solar collectors aren’t doing much, which means heating water on the cooking range for dishes. It’s sort of a pain, but the thing is, it’s not, really. We live in ridiculous abundance. We are lucky just to be alive. I can think of a million other ways our lives are easier than strictly necessary, and when I do, heating water on the cooking range to wash dishes suddenly ceases to seem like much of a burden. I actually think this is the biggest secret to a contented life: The ability to think of a million other ways in which your life is easier than strictly necessary. Seriously. Try it. And if that doesn’t work, pick up a copy of this anthology. Reading about slurping the cold jellied remains of boiled dog bones in a wall tent at -40 with your toes falling off from frostbite is bound to put a shine on your current state of affairs. Plus, there’s an Edward Abbey piece in there. Can’t hardly go wrong with Abbey.

We’ll milk two cows twice per day for maybe another 10 weeks, at which point we’ll transition to once per day. This is in part because we’ll have a nice stash of butter by then, in part because it’ll be time to start weaning the calves off milk, and in part because we’re lazy. Plus, by then it’ll be about time to start harvesting all sorts of garden-y goodies, so it’s a swell time to free up the evening milking period.

The calves are doing great. We feed 4x/day, a half-gallon each per feeding. Most the boys do the bottle feeding, but sometimes it’s Penny or me. It’s nice, bottle feeding a calf. I mean, yeah, sometimes you’d like to move onto the next thing, but the thing is, you can’t. You gotta wait until those confounded calves are done sucking the last foamy dregs outta those bottles, like an alcoholic nursing his final round beer. Truth is, I sort of like tasks that force me to slow down. To stay present. I need something to keep me on track.

We’re eating like kings. Fresh butter. Kefir made from cream. Haunches of lamb and pork. Salads at least twice each day, topped by Pen’s homemade cheese. For breakfast, eggs and sausage and thick slices of Blake’s bread. Brook trout the boys bring home. We all drink straight from the jar of milk in the fridge whenever we want. There are even still blueberries in the freezer. It’s all super simple and insanely good, and we try not to take it for granted but of course we do.

Despite the homestead abundance, we’ve been buying more convenience foods than is typical for us, a concession to everything we’re juggling. Apples. Hard cheeses. Raisins. Last week, Penny even picked up a bag of some sort of sweet potato chips and the boys were beside themselves. It’s nice to have a treat once in a while. It’s good to be reminded how much groceries cost, too, especially if you’re inclined to get the good stuff, which we are. But holy moly, it adds up real quick. We actually budgeted for this when we did the finances for the building project, and it’s a good thing we did, or we’d’ve been caught off guard.

Raining again. Good day to work in the woods, saw some lumber. Got me a house and barn to build. And more butter to make.