Moving the Milk House

Earlier this spring we moved the "Milk House" from the farmhouse side of the road to the greenhouse side. We plan on using it for an addition to our farm stand for a while until a larger more permanent stand can be built. 

"What is a milk house?" you ask, our family used this little shed to store the milk and milking equipment. There was a large cooler set up inside where the milk cans would be stored until delivery. These were very heavy milk cans that had to be hoisted into the cooler via a pulley system inside the little house. The electric pump milking system and the cream separator was also housed here. There are still special stainless racks on the walls inside where each piece was placed for safe storage. 

A friend with a forklift came early on a Saturday morning to help us with the move. Here we are below slowly lowering the house into place.

In serious need of a scrub down and new paint but in it's new resting place for now.

Fast forward several months and we are ready once again to move the milk house. This time across the driveway to a platform we will use as a floor for now. Originally a concrete slab served as the floor.

No forklift necessary this time! We use the tractor and some old fashion know how!

Our little farm stand awaits! Now to finish the paint and we are ready to move in!

Cider Pressing 2011

 The apple season this year was amazing!!! There were loads of apples on trees that usually don't produce any! We were able to pick from some friends trees untreated apples for cider making.

The cider press was built after doing lots of online research on how to build your own. There are LOTS of plans out there but we really liked the simplicity of this one. It uses a  jack as the pressing power!

 The first time we gave it a try it was inside... the kids were in charge of washing!

The box was lined with a thin piece of cotton fabric.

Then the apples were ground in the food processor just to chunk them up a little and dumped into the fabric. We then wrapped the excess fabric around the pulp to form a square "bag". This process was repeated 4 times. Each bag was piled on the last and then the pressing began.

This video is of the press in action, it was taken on our second day of pressing. We are outside this time and instead of using the food processor to chunk the apple we crushed them in a 5 gallon bucket using some serious "man power"! Check it out:

Next year a must have for cider pressing is an apple grinder!!!

Old... But New to Us!

We need a sign! And what could be better than the original Grand View Farm Sign which hung on the barn when it housed the working dairy.

The sign is in need of some repair as you can see. The letters are old and need to be painted as does the sign itself. We will post more photo's when it's done!

Next is our new (to us) farm wagon/trailer/soon to be rolling farm stand. We are envisioning a canopy over the top and baskets around the sides to hold produce. Stay tuned for more photos as the wagon gets a makeover.

This fine (but rusty and a little squeaky) hay rake was freed from the brush at the edge of the field. We are in need of one to more efficiently gather mowed grass and hay from the fields to use as compost. We need A LOT of compost and as we do not have any animals for manure this seems to be the be our choice of material for now.

We even hooked it up to the tractor and gave it a whirl! After sitting at the edge of the field for ?? years it actually worked! Except for a few issues with one wheel being very bent.