September Morning, Day after Labor Day

September mornings are here.  I may not have showered or dressed all day after throwing myself together for the morning milking, but accomplished some sweet things pictured here, made use of the end of summer bounty, strained some chicken broth for an evening soup, and kept the laundry loads going with the weekly piles as well as the annual rummage sale haul!

Lydia is making apple sauce for breakfast with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Gabe picked the box of apples from a wild tree with Grandpa by the river.

Three bowls of cooked apples.  Yum.

Whipped up more than a quart of cream into butter from our Guernsey-Dexter milk cow Ginger.

Simmering the butter until the fat gets clear and golden and the milk solids brown on the bottom.

Strained my clarified butter or ghee.

Liquid Gold

Had to capture it for you one more time.

I was also heating my milk to 180ºF for a purer yogurt culture.

Cooling my milk to 110ºF.

Jars of Ginger's milk culturing into Bulgarian and Greek yogurt in the food dehydrator at the 95ºF setting.

The seasons, let alone time, pass so quickly.  Overnight it feels like fall days.  Clouds with showers have returned, and the breeze carries a chill. 

A few eggs from the older hens, as a couple went broody and a few have taken a break.  Notice a wind egg in the mix.  Waiting for the spring pullets to start laying.  They need an egg mobile, a safe haven for all of the egg layers before the weather turns too much.

Victoria, our Speckled Sussex went broody and successfully hatched the half a dozen eggs from cousin Shane that Gabe put under her.  She is a happy mama hen with her brood free ranging in the garden every day.  Here, she and her chicks are waiting out a drizzle of morning rain in the protection of the clematis arbor, and one chick is hitching a ride on mama's back.