Yes, I do, make our butter.
I don’t make all of our butter, but for buttering toast, bread and veggies I make and use wonderful raw, grass fed butter. Not only is it yummy it is actually good for you! Imagine that!
(this is my grandma’s old butter churn, I wish I knew where she got it from and if she used it!)
One big change we have made is from drinking organic grain fed vitamin D fortified processed milk (homogenization and pasteurization is processing) to whole raw grass fed organic milk.
For more information you can go here:
http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm
http://www.realmilk.com/
http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/raw_milk_health_benefits.html
Because my milk isn’t homogenized the cream rises to the top of my milk jugs and I figured I could start making my own butter.
First I collect the cream from off the top of my milk. I don’t skim it all off, I want some of the butter fat in the milk so the fat soluble vitamins could actually work when we drank the milk. Once I had collected a couple of quarts it is butter making time! I let the cream sit for a couple of hours on the counter to warm up, then I pour it all into my churn.
Then we crank the handle and churn away, the kids really like to help with this.
The cream gets nice and frothy.
Just a bit more churning and the butter fat collects into a nice big lump floating in the sweet butter milk.
Once the butter is out of the churn it need to be rinsed and rinsed in cold water until the water runs clear. I need to get all the butter milk out, so it won’t go bad sitting out. Isn’t it pretty and yellow, this yellow coloring is all the vitamin A concentrated in the butter fat. A lot of commercial butter will add a little coloring to give their butter the yellow color.
The color of grass fed butters change over the season. In the spring the butter can be almost orange from all the vitamins gleaned from fast growing spring grasses. In the winter it will be whiter, because the hay has less vitamin A in it.
Once again Aimee… TOTALLY awesome!!! I wanna try!!!!!
Fun and delicious! I wish I had a cool butter churn. I let my kids put a marble in a baby food jar and shake and shake (for a long time) the cream and then they have their own butter – eventually! Where do you buy your raw milk from?
Loved this post!! I have wanted to try this for a long time; found out a friend of mine has a butter churn which they use. SO cool!
On another note–I SO wish I had checked out your link to the Provident Living site before I threw away a lot of older dried food the other day. I found out that it probably was OK to keep. Now I feel 🙁
Blessings,
Aimee
My Aunt Ruth and Uncle Dave raised cows and we always loved drinking fresh milk when we visited them and we also loved eating homemade cheese; my Aunt made the very best cheese!
I haven’t been able to find fresh milk locally so I like to make butter when cream goes on sale during Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s not the same as your butter but it is a whole lot better tasting than store butter.
Wow, looks yummie. Can't wait for our dinner invite!!
I grew up dringking raw milk but didn't understand the benefits of it. Over the last 10 years, I've become convinced that it is the only way to go. Although I prefer goats milk.
I love homemade butter 🙂