Starting to ‘Live the Dream’ to milk sheep and make cheese from the milk and it is more wondrous than I could have imagined. Most of 2016 and 2017 have been taken up with experimenting to create the equipment for mobile milking.
2017:
The sheep were SO calm with their lambs around, and the milking machine mimics the lambs rate of suckling, so no need to restrain the heads of the sheep, they were perfectly happy.
But I couldn’t lift all of the equipment on and off the Landrover on my own. So for 2018 – Jason Steen, designer extraordinaire of Theatre Royal Plymouth’s Production Services department rigged this up for me, using a suspended track from Harken Industrial.
This is the one that weighs as much as I do:
The completely amazing Tara Wright, who designed most of the sheep handling equipment, came to help me work out how best to use everything:
First thing – to see if I can get the milking machine on the Landrover with my new rig:
Answer is YES!
Then the rest of the heavies:
And finally – the main purpose – to get the sheep crate on and off of the Landrover on my own:
So now – out into the field!
This was a challenging day – the angle was so steep that the equipment kept trying to slide back and clonk me on the head:
Tara brings in the sheep:
And has a little rest:
This was another field, another day:
New to my setup – a cable reel repurposed into a waterproof milking stool – Luxury!
Designed and made by Cable and Mable 
And each day when I come in – I’ve been making cheese:
Because this is so experimental, I decided to buy my own milk analyser, so no waiting a few days for testing, I can tweak recipes to the protein/fat ratio as I go.
Result!