Coco in the Dark

This is the face I see waiting for me every day in the pre-dawn hours.  Coco is enjoying her lush little pasture by the tractor shed.  Rocky and Blackie, the two bull calves that came with her, keep her company.  We get about two gallons of delicious creamy calcium-rich raw milk every morning and night.  Raw milk is calcium rich and contains all the good enzymes that pasteurization removes.  The kitties get the morning milk and I strain and bottle the night time milk for us.  I make yogurt and mozzarella cheese with it but haven't quite mastered the butter yet.  I adore the yogurt and swear it is habit forming.  I'm not surprised as raw milk yogurt raises your seratonin levels.   Milking requires a lot of work as in washing and bleaching bottles, buckets and pots in addition to caring for the cows.   Matt has really taken to the dairy man role and supervises the care of the herd.  He gets us set for milking and is in charge of "teat dipping" which prevents bacteria from entering the teats.  Matt does not want his cows to be in icy rain or snow and has built stalls with a milking stanchion in the barn.  It will be a lot easier for me to get to them once the barn yard freezes over.  I won't have to slide down the slope to their field with buckets of water and grain.   Having my own cow to milk is a dream come true.  I always wanted it but put it out of my mind due to "hay issues."  Now I have a reliable farmer filling my barn with hay.  Coco comes with her own dramatic story, which I will relate another time.