Cream separators

 I got some new toys.  The folks we got Raisa from had 2 antique De Laval cream separators and, like Raisa, they've found a home here.  One is electric.

And the other is a hand crank table top model. 

At first I felt very intimidated by them.  They came with no instructions or lists of included parts.  I watched many Youtube videos and looked for online manuals, which were helpful, but the only way to really figure them out was to take them apart, clean them and put them back together.  It was actually kind of fun and I was able to reassemble them with no extra parts remaining.   Every time you use them you have to wash 33 parts from the electric one and something like 26 parts for the hand crank one.

James bought some oil for them but I think I need to try something different.  I can't get the electric one to work properly yet but I was able to use the manual one.  First I had to warm the milk to at least 90 degrees, as if it had recently come out of the animal instead of the refrigerator.

I was thrilled it worked.  I can't see any reason why I'd want to use the electric one when the manual separator was so simple.  I still want to get it up and running though.

We now have more butter. I had to chill the cream before making butter.  I'm learning a lot.   Last night James whipped some cream for our pumpkin pie.  Yum.  It sure is exciting having our own cream.  I can't wait to try separating the cream from the goats' milk this spring and see how it compares.