Friends of ours are now up to four cows and milk hasn’t been selling well for them lately, so their milk is piling up. They’ve agreed to sell it to us for $2.50 a gallon, about what you’d pay at the store. But this is Jersey cow milk, so there’s a lot of cream. And you have to skim every milk bottle before you put it on your Cheerios. (Mm mm good!) And the quart jars of cream have been piling up in the fridge. So Jess and the kids each grabbed a jar yesterday and started shakin’.

And look!

The secret, we think, is to let the cream warm up. When we tried making butter last year, we took it straight out of the fridge and threw it in the mixer, and it would take up to 45 minutes to congeal. Yuck. Because it was cold, wethinks. And yesterday she left the cream out all morning and it was butter within 7 minutes.

Last year we also had a problem with the butter going rancid in a few days because we didn’t know to drain the buttermilk and rinse the butter. Ick. So Jess has rinsed this batch out thoroughly. I was hoping to get some on my (homemade) muffins this morning but no dice; she wanted to rinse it again.

That’s how we learn. But I’m glad to be getting raw milk again, and glad for the cream that comes with it. Sour cream is next.