Thursday, March 12, 2009

Milk Truck is Here

Usually the milk truck picks our milk up about 5:30 AM but due to the snow this week he was a few hours late. We've been wanting to get some pictures so here they are! It's a pretty big truck and he comes from quite a ways away.
The milk truck driver backs up to our milkhouse and runs a hose from the truck to our tank.

First he measures the amount of milk and takes a sample each time he comes which is every other day. They measure the milk by pounds, not gallons. There's 8.6 pounds in a gallon.


This is two days worth of milk. There's an agitator in the middle that keeps it stirred up, but not so much that it turns into butter! It is also in an insulated tank and keeps the milk about 36-38 degrees.



He puts the sample away, takes the milk and he's done. They check our sample each time and then we get paid based on how much protein and butterfat there is. It also tells them if there's something wrong with the milk. Like if you accidentally put a cows milk in that had been treated with antibiotics. I guess farmers have been know to add water to their milk to make it look like more so it checks the water content as well as the bacteria level. When the milk gets to the plant, they test each truckful as well so your milk is definately safe that you drink. If there's any problem at all, they dump the milk so farmers are really careful to make sure they do things right. No one wants to have their milk dumped and lose a paycheck! We wash the milk tank out really good and then it's ready to be filled again.


So that's all about how the milk gets from our farm to the plant, and from there to the store. Milk is good for us and I hope we all desire God's Word like a little baby desires his milk!




8 comments:

  1. Great post. When is the book coming out? Here we drink caribou milk but we sure miss fresh, raw Jersey milk.
    Sj

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  2. Thanks for the post! It's interesting to see how it's done.

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  3. Um, Mom here must be missing a crayon in the box, what book? What do you have to pay for caribou milk? I would think it would be quite pricey.

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  4. That was a neat post! I liked the pictures.:)
    Bethany

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  5. Do you have a bunch of different breeds of cows, or just one breed? Our 2 cows and one heifer are all dry right now. The first one won't calve until May. :(

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  6. We have mostly holsteins dairy cows but we do have some mixed with jersey, geurnsey, brown swiss, ayrshire, and a little swedish red.

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  7. did the hay barn explode or somethin

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  8. No, even though it looks like it, the hay shed did NOT explode!! The guys are getting low on hay and there was hay under the straw bales so they just tossed all the straw bales out to get to the hay underneath! Normally they do put them separate so I'm not sure why the hay was under the straw! What a mess we're going to have to clean up this spring!

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