Milking duration

[Guest guest]

Hare Krsna dasi wrote:

I think Niscala is touching on an important point here. If among, for

example,

4 families, each family breeds its cow in a different year, that would

provide

different qualities of milk which they could distribute among themselves.

Perhaps the freshest cow could provide the hot milk, and the one currently

on

the longest lactation could provide milk for curd.

 

Is there any reason for this? Are the ones on longest lactation providing

lower quality milk, so that milk is best for curd?

If we are to produce ghee, all the milk should be skimmed?

Jerseys are good for self-sufficiency as they give really creamy milk, its

about one-quarter cream! When I was churning butter, we didn't want to waste

one drop of milk in any shape or form. So curd was only made if we could use

all the whey, and after churning the butter, the buttermilk we'd turn into

curd, rather than the milk which was a more drinkable product, and able to

be used for making yoghurt. Then the whey from the buttermilk curd, we used

in making rice, because actually whey is very good for you, it is full of

protein and calcium, in fact health shops sell whey powder as a

body-builder!

 

Cooperation among the

families with regard to the breeding schedule could make things work very

well.

 

Especially in regards to ghee-making. If your cow is only giving 1 or 2

litres a day, how can you gather enough cream to make butter- churning

worth-while? This is another reason why family owned farms, i.e. one family

on a farm, would find it difficult to be self-sufficient and not overbreed.

Another reason is that if you're only breeding one cow every 3 or 4 years,

being only one family and not wishing to overbreed, (if you're sensible and

not heading for disaster), then it may be on average a 6-8 year gap in

between births of bullocks (oxen). Then how can you train such different

size bullocks together? But on a larger property, with breeding of on

average one per year, for 4 families, then you get them only 2 years apart

on average, which makes it possible. Or for an even larger property, say

twice that size, with one per 6 months, you'd get them on average 1 year

apart.

So it seems a shame that devotees after having tried to influence the

management of Iskcon farms towards simple living, give up and buy their own-

it has happened to more than one family I know, plus a few others are in the

process of doing it. Because on your own, apart from the problems mentioned

above, where is the support of other devotees, sadhu-sanga, and the support

of the other varnas for practicality. Where most importantly is the ksatriya

to provide you with FREE land in return for some of what you produce, so you

don't have land repayments, be forced to cash-crop or give up dependence on

bullocks, use the tractor instead, because the focus must be profit? Or give

up sadhana, to get the time to grow enough with the bullocks, and market it,

just to make repayments?

Sorry to repeat what I have mentioned in other letters, actually Carol's

idea is good. If you're stuck in that system, being on your own farm with

repayments, and you still want to only use bullocks, then to grow HERBS

which only requires a small amount of cultivation, would seem to be the way

to go for a cash-crop. Especially high-priced medicinal herbs in big demand

like echinacea. So I hope I'm not mistaken for some sort of fanatic, but it

just seems to me that there is a lot of drawbacks to family owned farms-

milk product supply, availability of compatible bullocks, land repayments,

availability of other varnas to assist, availability of a gurukula,

availability of sadhu-sanga, or even someone the kids have to play with,

some friends, because if they're deprived of that their whole life, they may

become bitter about it later on...

 

your servant,

 

Niscala dasi

 

 

 

 

 

 

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