Hey, warm those hands lady!

Saturday I decided to try something new… milk a cow. I have quite a few friends on the Farm Crew, so I thought it would be fun to tag along with Alice on her Saturday morning milking. Why not? It’s not like every college student has opportunities such as these. I had it all planned out. I borrowed muck boots from another friend on the farm and knew to meet up with Alice at promptly 7am. I woke up before the sun rose and dressed warmly for it snowing and cold.

It was beautiful walking down to the farm with snow flakes being illuminated by all the light posts. As we walked past all of the dorms I knew that everyone was still sleeping bundled up in their beds. We finally made it to the farm and took off a couple layers because being so close to Katie, our milking cow, would get warm.

First we had to clean Katie’s udder and underside completely before we began our milking. Once that was complete, we set up two stools on either side and started milking. It was so much harder then I would have ever imagined. I was “in charge” of one teat and struggled to get any milk to come out. It was not until after Alice had finished her 2 teats that I eventually got into a rhythm. Afterward we brought our pale into the farm shop and filtered it into 2 large mason jars. Ready for consumption.

I am just so happy that I got to have the experience of milking Katie. I continued my day with making muffins for breakfast with Katie’s milk, which were delicious. Then I was back to the grind stone with homework for the rest of the afternoon.

This past Sunday I also decided to try something new again…bake bread. I realize that many people bake bread all the time; however I have never done such a thing. I found a recipe online, bought some yeast and ingredients, and proceeded to go to the kitchen and figure it out. Luckily someone was in the kitchen at the same time who makes bread often and was willing to show me a few tricks when it came to kneading. However, other then that I did it. It was so gratifying after 2.5 hours to pull two large rounded loaves of bread out of the oven. It tasted so good to eat something that I made myself.

So this has been a couple weeks of new experiences that are just two more reasons why I love Warren Wilson.

Andrea