Ticking boxes and crossing off lists

I'll do a proper round up of our current host when we leave (last day tomorrow) including some input from the rest of the team but just had to share this afternoon's experience as we got to have a go at milking cows!

This was hugely exciting for me; it was high on my list of things I wanted to do this year and the chance came up here despite this being a beef cattle farm as our host was doing a turn at milking on the neighbouring farm so we went down to see it going on.

The herd is 120 cows and they are brought in, 12 at a time, hooked up 6 at a time to the milking machine and milked for a few minutes each. Most gave about 15 litres or so of milk, which runs to a huge cooling tank and is collected by the milk van. It's all pretty calm, the cows meander in happily enough, are fed while they are milked and then wander back out the other end into the yard.

We watched for a while and then got to have a quick go at milking by hand - really exciting to actually do it and of course we had to do it into our hands and have a quick gulp down too, can now say we've drunk milk straight from a cow :).

Dragon, Star and I LOVED it :)

Star then spent ages chatting to the cows as they came out the other end, number 107 who we had milked stood with her for quite a while being stroked and thanked for her milk!

The other huge plus of staying on a cattle farm has been beef for dinner every night - roast, bolognaise, stew - delicious!