Homemade Butter from Grass-fed Cows

my first pat of butter

A few months ago we started buying our milk from a local grass-fed dairy farm. It’s illegal in our state to sell raw milk, but it’s not illegal to drink raw milk from cows you own. Herdshares allow you to buy into a herd of cows, thereby giving you ownership. We pay a monthly fee towards the feed and board of our cow and receive a gallon of milk each week in return.

Since starting the herdshare I’ve experimented with making raw yogurt and have now experimented with making butter. When we lived in NY when I was in first grade we got milk straight from the tank at the dairy down the road. I remember mom had a butter churn paddle setup in a large jar (something like this, if I remember correctly, though I think mom's was larger). This one and this one look interesting, as well.

I thought about getting a butter churn, then I found this tutorial that uses a food processor. Since we have a food processor, I opted to give this method a try before investing in a butter churn. 

cream at the top, waiting to be made into fresh butter

a quart of cream poured off, with some still in the jug

Using the food processor is super easy and only takes a few minutes. I’ve been pouring off a quart of cream from each gallon and churning it in two batches in the food processor.

after churning, butter floating in the buttermilk  

buttermilk poured off into the jar, butter waiting to be washed

Washing all the buttermilk from the butter is the hardest part, but this last batch I used the food processor to wash the butter. After pouring off the buttermilk, I added cold water to the food processor, whizzed it around a bit, then poured off the water. I added cold water and repeated the process several times until the water was clear after whizzing the butter around. Easier than doing it by hand with a wooden spoon, but still the most time-consuming part of the process.

In any case, it’s easy to make butter when you're not churning it by hand for hours and hours :) And it’s fun to do something we’ve read about in the Little House books, just like maple sugaring and making maple candy, both of which are in mentioned in Little House in the Big Woods and which we’ve done as well.

my most recent pat of butter