In June 2021, we bought a heifer we later named Annabelle. She quickly befriended the other farm animals, and we fell in love with our new daily routine.
It took a few failed attempts with AI before we opted to borrow a bull, but just over 15 months later our patience was rewarded with a calf we named Brisket.
What started as a daily grooming routine now included a daily milking routine. We separated Brisket overnight and took our share of her milk in the morning.
Milk, butter, yogurt — not to mention the occasional sour cream, fresh mozzarella, and buttermilk!
For a while now, we’ve been asking ourselves: was it worth it? As a grass-fed cow — not a lick of corn in Annabelle’s diet… except for two unfortunate escapes! — the investment in hay and alfalfa was substantial, not to mention vet visits, minerals, and infrastructure costs.
Looking back to the receipts of 2023, we spent almost $5,000 on Annabelle:
A few health concerns bumped up the overall spend, but the single biggest cost was undoubtedly the 1600kg of alfalfa we used to boost Annabelle’s protein throughout the year:
On the milking front, we kept fairly rigorous records:
All told, we yielded approximately 2600L of grass-fed, “organic” (not certified) milk in 2023! From that milk, Charity estimated we separated about 2L of cream for every 8L of whole milk, with a litre of cream in turn yielding about a half pound of butter. We also made yogurt every two weeks, with about 8L of milk producing 5L of yogurt.
Here on the island, groceries are perhaps a tad more expensive than back on the mainland:
If we imagined ourselves buying the same quantity of these products, we net a very decent “revenue” of just over $2600!
But this isn’t the whole story. The reality is that the milk we drink isn’t just 2% — it’s even better than the 3.25% homogenized milk. And the butter is “grass-fed”, plus the yogurt has the texture and density more like Greek yogurt. And then there’s Brisket who yielded over 400lbs of meat this past October.
If we compare against similar products from the grocery store, and the very reasonable bulk price of $5.45/lb for a whole cow, the numbers look even better!
At the end of the day, these are all just imaginary numbers (except the expenses!). There’s just no way to attach a price to a homemade latte using milk from that very morning and delivered with a flair from a very loving daughter:
We love you, Annabelle!
