REAL BUTTERMILK

here in the Lancaster County area of Pa are a number of dairy coops that have their own markets. These markets normally carry milk and products such as cream (sweet and sour), buttermilk, skim milk, farmer cheese, Lancaster Ementhaler, and their own homade ice cream. The ice creams are flavors that youd never find anywhere else, like Chocolate malt, sunflower seed,sweet cream, sour cherry and sweet cherry.As well as the more common, like van, choco, fruit flavors etc. they all are made on the spot and sold through the dairy chain. Normally summer waiting lines for choco malt are outrageous, I think they put heroin in the ice cream.

I never developed a taste for buttermilk except as an ice cold "syrup" to have with fresh strawberries. The best way to eat your fresh fruit.


if youre looking for a cherry pitter write to the Machias Hardware Company , Rt 1A, Machias Maine.They have all kinds of cherry pitters to choose from. They have the basic pitter(which is the model we use) all the way up to the all stainless 316-Rc59 Yuppie pitters made by some unpronounceable company in the Harz Mountains.

Farmerman,
I work at WilliamsSonoma so I bought one of the cherry/olive pitters they sell. While it isn't like my mom's (a plunger device mounted on a mason jar . . . sounds like something Martha Stewart would revive at a high price with a Martha green painted top), it works so much better than slitting cherries with a paring knife and removing the pits!!

Too much cholesterol!

Martha Green eh? We saw her coaster boat last year. Its a Hinkley with the deck and pilot house painted a hens egg brown. Looked good. The lady does have a good sense of color.

I have the address for a seed company that sells anti-genetically modified food tee-shirts. I am going to buy a shirt to promote the idea.

Farmerman,
I think she does have a good sense of color but it matches her complexion. My brunette coloring doesn't go with her tones!

and the fact that , well... you are polka dotted,
well you are....


Im sorry if noones told you before

Don't need a cherry pitter, but could sure use an apple slicer/corer that cuts all the way to the bottom of the apple. Got one, plainoldme?

Just remebering, when I first used a "Kirschomat" (which translates to 'cherry automatic maschine' in English): red all over :wink:
(mother ).

The old Yankee apple peeler with the apple impaled on a rod in a vice like machine with a blade that peels and slices is supposed to be good. No one ever brings them back, which is a good sign. They run about $28 and in addition to WilliamsSonoma, LLBean and Wilson's Farm sells them. I told you it was Yankee!!

I bought some of those yellow and red cherries and while they were good, they aren't as good as the really dark sweet red fruit. Did get some local strawberries that were almost the color of cherries, they were so ripe! Yum!

Still looking for it. Maybe I will find it this weekend at the Holstein show!

damn near impossible to get real buttermilk from aHolstein, the butterfat content is very low, Brown Swiss on the other hand has a high butterfat content.

Or one of them petite little Jerseys



Holsteins produce massive amounts of milk plainoldme, but it's not very rich.

Really? I don't remember any other breed but Holsteins in Michigan where I grew up and where buttermilk was sold from road side stands. Does that mean one can not make butter from Holstein milk? That doesn't seem right.


There are Jersey and Guernsey shows that run in accord with the Greenfield County Fair next month. Maybe I will finally find buttermilk there!

Typical Holstein milk is 2.5% to 3% milk fat (the Jersey, another popular dairy breed, produces about half the volume of milk per cow per day, but at 4 to 4.5% milk fat). European Holstein herds (especially in Denmark and the Netherlands) can produce much higher fats - some as high as 4.6% - even with yields per cow per year of 8,000 litres.
Interesting, to me, is taht dairy milk used to be sold to the market priced by butterfat content and measured by the pound, with the advent of modern production methods the value by $ was changed to simple poundage totally ignoring butterfat content. We had a Brown Swiss that provided us with all of our milk, buttermilk, heavy cream and butter. Often my grandfather and I would make a light lunch out of saltine crackers and fresh churned and salted butter. My mother's favorite was cornbread crumpled into a cold glass of buttermilk.

I just wanted to add that: the Holsteiner from Holstein have an average of 4.23% milkfat (the black&white) and 4.28% (red&white) - the cows (especially the black-white) you find here mostly.

The main difference might be reasoned in the fact that 'milk' must have 3.5% fat here ("pure milk" at least 3.8%).

These days, you generally get only real buttermilk here .... besides you want some mixed buttermilk (with fruit).
Other buttermilk doesn't sell so good.

Buttermilk soup .... something I've never liked at all.

In our Farm newspapers they dont report "butterfat" anymore. They list the milk produced as an average ECM (energy corrected milk) number. I have no idea what that means or how one computes an ECM. Any idears?

That's interesting - here (not only Germany, but in the EU), the percentage of butterfat is THAT number which makes a milkcow(race) expensive. (Of course, it must give some liters as well :wink: )

Feed conversion and feed efficiency can be calculated in different ways. A commonly used measure is total efficiency, calculated as the total production of ECM per kg ingested DM or FEm.