About 3 years ago my dad decided, seemingly on a whim, to buy sheep. I’m not entirely sure how it happened; I had raised my own pen of chickens and grown veggies, so I thought we were fine. I suppose it partly started during the 2020 pandemic when the first signs of food shortage started. So with a fervor, we grew so many zucchinis, squash, and cucumbers since my dad was anxious we wouldn’t have enough. While it was fortunate he bought a freezedrier to process it all, I was still largely overworked, leading me to quit everything agriculture for a few years.
Now though, with reinvested vigor in farming, my dad took me to a somewhat local place to get protection for the sheep: Great Pyrenees dogs, a brother and sister to be exact. It was somewhat common to get siblings, though not for the what-seemed-to-be-legit biz owner to leave us without their paperwork. After taking the pug-sized marshmallow’s back home to roam in their outdoor pen, we took the trailer to pick up East Fresian sheep. Why? Because they’re the best breed for milk, have soft wool, and tasty meat too. Having gotten them acquainted with milking (my dad did, I mean), because I said that I’d have nothing to do with them… except helping them into the stand and processing the milk, I made yogurt. After a lot of yogurt later, I figured, “How about butter? How hard could that be?” Oh boy, I thought all there was to making butter was keeping it at 50 degrees and mixing it. Nope… it didn’t even turn into heavy cream, and all the while I wondered what the sticky icky stuff that floated to the top of the milk was (ahem, that’s cream dummy).
2 years later when picking up a book about butter at a book sale, having almost not gotten it, I’m so glad I did. Before it I thought that butter, as said in Secret to Satisfying Coffee, wasn’t all that special. When I started buying the right kind of butter though, a fresh Amish butter picked up for sale either at Lowe’s Foods or Food Lion, I had better sustained energy than the cheap “fresh cream” dupe.
With renewed interest then, I looked for the right supplies for churning butter, since simply mixing it up didn’t do anything. Also, I realized how much a dummy I was by not realizing that the stuff on the top of the milk that forms after 3 days is the fat. And the more days that passed by, the more concentrated it got (separating from the milk). Though I didn’t want the manual method since I don’t have time for that, so I got a rather expensive $80 electric churn that I doubted would work. When putting the fat inside, I waited 5 minutes- nothing. Since it was advertised to make butter in 5 minutes, I thought either my milk or churn was a dud. Even so, I kept it going, and around 45 minutes something happened. I started hearing a different grinding sound, and when checking on it, I couldn’t believe that it looked like butter!
The book talked about kneading the butter and putting it in ice water. So that’s what I did, and it actually felt like the real stuff! Though it was white since sheep milk doesn’t contain carotene like cow milk does.
“Sheep milk is extremely high in vitamin B12 and folate. In fact, it is nearly 50% higher in these nutrients than cow milk and 7-8 times higher than levels in goat milk.”
Takeaway
By giving butter a second chance and persevering, I’ve made the healthiest butter in the world, and learned about a different way to process milk and the history behind it (as read in the book).