Terra do Milho

Tag: Cheese making

  • The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    The sun is important for a lot of things. Your vegetable garden will not thrive without enough direct sunlight. The use of solar panels is only worth the effort when you have enough direct sunlight at the right angle. Light in your house during the day is desirable.

    Knowing the position of the sun on your location is key to whether you will have enough sunlight on your Homestead.

    At the other hand shade can also be important in places where it gets very hot in summer. Having to much hot burning sunshine in your vegetable garden will not be good for your lettuce and radishes. These crops, that need a lot of moisture will not grow in the burning hot sun.

    Your house might heat up to much, instead you would want some coolness in the house in hot summers.

    The latitude and the position of the sun

    Why is it important to consider the latitude where you are? Apart from that the latitude partly defines the climate zone you are in, it also defines the height of the sun and the number of sun hours per day.

    The higher the latitude the lower the maximum height of the sun. At a higher altitude the days will be longer in summer and shorter in winter.

    The lower the altitude the less this difference in length of day and night get. In the tropics the days and nights are always almost equally long.

    What you need to know about the sun’s position on your location

    How to use this knowledge when you are looking for your ideal Homestead location?

    There are two ways to use this knowledge for finding your Homestead location.

    The first research behind your desktop

    You can either look it up on a map and figure out what the position of the sun is on a location. You will have to look up the position of the sun in different seasons to get a complete picture. This way of figuring out the positions sun on a location might be useful in the first coarse surges for a location. Like when you are still working out a location behind your desktop. You will find out more about this at the end of the blog.

    Checking out the sun´s position at the location

    Once you have fount an area and you are going to investigate pieces of land the other way of inquiring the suns position comes in.

    While you are standing at the location you want to check out, imagine that you are the center of the universe and picture the following things:

    Picture the sun´s arch

    1. Where exactly on the location does the sun rise and where does it set? Midsummer and midwinter, since this can be very different.
    2. How high does the sun rise? Midsummer and midwinter. This is something you will have to look up and estimate or ask for specifically (scroll a bit down to “Looking Deeper into the Position of the Sun”). Knowing the altitude where you are can help you to find out.
    3. You will have to picture the arch that the sun makes midsummer and midwinter. This way you will get an idea how much sunlight you will have in both seasons. In summer you will have the maximum amount of sunlight and in winter the minimum amount.

    Where is the sun and where is the shade

    Once you know the sun´s arch in summer and winter, you can go a step further. The next thing will be: what time does the sun appear and disappear in midsummer and midwinter at the location? It seems to be something you can look up in a calendar.

    Yes, you can. And it will work on flat terrain, but it will be different when you are looking somewhere in the mountains for a location. Mountains will be blocking the sun and will make a big difference in the amount of sun hours that you will get on a specific location.

    Apart from mountains you could be checking out a location for other obstacles that can block the sun, like buildings or large trees. Where do these objects shade the location in summer and winter.

    The location that you are checking out might be a larger area. Walk around on the location and see what differences there are on the location at any specific point.

    How does your homestead fit in?

    • How would that work out for your garden or for your solar panels?
    • What would it mean for the heating of your house?
    • Will the winter sun still heat up your house? Will the house be warming up to much in summer?
    • At what time in spring would the sun hit your house or vegetable garden for the first time?
    • You will have to position all the objects you will want to have on your Homestead and figure out what sunlight and shade means to these objects. It can be anything like: house, chicken house, barn, vegetable garden, orchard, guesthouse, etc.

    Looking Deeper into the Position of the Sun

    The position of the sun per season

    This video made by the University of Nottingham gives a deeper inside about the position of the sun in different times of the year and in different altitudes.

    The exact position of the sun on your location

    For those who want to dive in even deeper this a tool that shows the exact position of the sun on any place on earth. It does not take the obstacles into account though. Based on the graphs you can picture it in real time. Although there is a tool that calculates the length of a shadow.

    Click on the link below for the tool that shows the exact position of the sun:

    SunEarthTools.com

    Being sure that your location is right for you

    I hope that this blog will help you to find the right location for your Homestead. Finding out the position of the sun can be of great help. Both methods of finding out about the amount of sunshine on your location, behind your desktop or on site will be useful in combination.

    The video and site that I found will help you a little further when you are interested in making a technical effort on the subject.

    If there is anything you would like to know more about the topic of the blog, do not hesitate to leave a question or comment below in the comment area.

    Find out more about what it takes to start a Homestead.

    Check this blogpost by clicking on the links:

    5 Phases in Building a Homestead

    Preparing for Your Homestead.

    5 Reasons Why We Started Our Homestead

    Finding A Homestead Location With Good And Sufficient Fresh Water

    Starting A Homestead In A Remote Area

    Best Homestead Location

  • Farming story: Goats, Milk and Cheese…

    Farming story: Goats, Milk and Cheese…

    In the morning, when we get up I see our goat Bianca through the window. She is looking though the window into our sleeping room, thinking: “maybe they are up and bring me some food”… So the morning starts; and our little farming story. After breakfast I go down to the goats to feed and milk them.

    Goat
    Our goat Bianca on our terrace.

    Feeding our goats

    Goats need enough nutrients to give a good amount of milk. In the past, and still in some regions of this world, goats used and are kept very low profile. They are not fed at all, they were just herded in sometimes poor landscapes. The production of milk was very low and the loss of animals was high.

    Although some people still keep their goats in the old traditional way, nowadays goats are mostly kept for a high milk production. The Dutch white milking goat who descents from the Saanen goat, gives up to 4 liters of milk per goat per day. These goats are kept inside in large barns and they are fed special food high in nutreints. We want  to stay somewhat in the middle.

    Our Bianca gives us about 2 liters of milk a day. She gets 1800 grams of a mixture of Luzern, barley, oats, fodder broad beans and sunflower seeds a day. All our goats get the same mixture but the amount is in accordance with their weight and situation. The situation can be that they are pregnant, giving milk or non of the two. Goats that give milk need to eat the most. If you want to read more about what to feed goats check or blog: ‘What do goats eat?‘

    Free ranging goats

    Our goats have about a hectare of land where they can walk freely. So they can choose what they want to eat. Most of the year they stay in their area where they can eat what grows inside and where we feed them cuttings from the trees and bushes that we have to clear or prune.

    During the winter month (January and February) we take them through the orchard for two hours a day, which they enjoy a lot. This also ads valuable nutrients to their diet. When the early apples start to bloom we have to stop otherwise they will eat the flowers and we will be without apples. You can reed more in our blog ‘Clearing Land With Goats’.

     

    Goat kid
    Goat kid

    Milking and making cheese

    We build a shelter for the goats where they can walk in and out during the day.  Attached to the shelter is our milking parlour where the goats are milked twice a day, every morning and evening.

    After milking the milk gets pasteurised. After it has cooled down it goes into the fridge until we have enough milk to make a batch of cheese.

    Most of the time I make fresh cheese but when I have too much milk I make cured cheese, like Caerphilly, Gouda or Romano.

    The milk of our goats does not taste very goaty when it is pasteurised straight away. It is also very creamy, delicious for making cheese with.

    Cheese making goes way back into the European history, long before the romans. Nobody really knows when and where it started, but I can imagine that it was a good way to deal with the not so tasty sour milk. Turn the sour stuff in something useful with a good taste.

    Fresh cheese Terra do Milho
    Fresh cheese from Terra do Milho

    Eating cheese back in the days was not without danger. People had no clue about hygiene, things sometimes got out of hand and people got poisoned. Working clean really makes some sense.

    Why pasteurizing is important

    Another thing that people sometimes forget is that pasteurising milk has a purpose. When Louis Pasteur invented pasteurisation he solved a problem. People got really ill from drinking cow’s milk, it was a cause of tuberculosis. You can also get a nasty thing from raw goats milk, it is called Brucellosis and it feels like a terrible flew that takes forever. Luckily our goats are tested every year, so we know they don’t have it and their raw milk is safe. We also intent to use our own bucks for mating the ladies, which reduces the risk of infection. Pasteurising even eliminates the risk further, also I mainly use it because of the soft taste the cheese gets. Eating matured cheese was and is never a risk in this case, the diseases disappear when the cheese is maturing.

    Blue cheese from Terra do Milho
    Making cured blue cheese.

    I had never milked a goat, nor made cheese before

    When we bought our first two goats I never had milked a goat and I never made cheese myself. Apart from some paneer, which is more like cooked milk with lemon and then drained through a cloth. No, I mean real cheese making. After reading a very good Dutch book on cheese making, ‘Kaas je kaasje’ I just started making cheese. It was surprisingly easy and before I new I invented my own type of fresh cheese, which I still make today.

    The little booklet explains the principles of cheese making very well. It encouraging you to invent your own cheese. For making the matured cheeses I adjust cows milk recipes, this works fine. If you want to know more of how I make fresh cheese check this recipe.  I have it all in a document with some pictures which I can send to you.

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    Goats, goatsmilk, cheese
    Farming story…