Chicken Dance

(a.k.a United States Presidential Race 2008)

The Republicans

Obama

Amish Clothesline

I am reading a book that says the invention of the wheel provided little advantage to ancient Native Mexican Americans because they had no large animals with which to pull wheeled vehicles. I wonder if they thought of this:

Each garment is pinned to the bottom wire and pulled out over the lawn. Metal stabilizers connect the top and bottom wires at regular intervals to keep the bottom wire from sagging too much under the weight of the clothes.

At the far end, a second pulley is attached to a tree.

(Apologize for the crappy picture)

Making Butter

Paula Deen would be proud...

Jersey cow producing approximately 3 gallons of milk per day on a "grass fed" diet

Cleaning the utter

Testing for mastitis: no coagulation indicates a negative result
Mastitis (Wikipedia)
California Mastitis Test (UMissouri Extension)

Milking

Cream is skimmed from the top of the whole milk and stored in jars.

When a sufficient amount has been collected the cream is placed in a butter churn.

Churning the cream into butter takes approximately 30 minutes if turned vigorously.
(This churn makes efficient use of gravity.)

Butter

After extracting from the churn, the butter is washed to remove any residual buttermilk, salted (optional), and pounded into shape.