Of all the riches surrounding the raw milk life, colostrum is icing on the cake. Our lovely dairy cow of last year, Gert, who died of milk fever, gave gallons of the thickest, neon yellow colostrum, but it was too strong to drink straight. This year when Annabelle calved I was determined to drink it no matter what. To my surprise, it was pleasant, yeasty and salty, but so good in nutrition I was thankful for every drop. I saved colostrum cream to make butter, which has an amazing flavor, and I will save it for a rainy day, in the freezer, when someone is not feeling well. Here is a wonderful article by Sally Fallon on colostrum.
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Making colostrum butter is the same as making regular raw butter. If your cream is room temperature, it will break into buttermilk faster, but even if it is cold, it does not take long if you use a whisk attachment on a mixer. Whip the cream for appx. ten minutes.
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When it is whipped, keep mixing for a few minutes more. The cream will begin to separate into buttermilk and butter curds.
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Continue mixing on low until the buttermilk gets very splashy and thin, only a few seconds more.
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Pour butter curds and buttermilk into a colander which has small holes, draining the buttermilk into a bowl below. For a half gallon of colostrum cream I got one quart of buttermilk. Notice how richly yellow the colostrum buttermilk is compared to regular raw cream buttermilk.
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Rinse the butter curds in the colander very well with cold water, until water runs clear. Put the curds into a large bowl and continue to wash and squeeze out all the buttermilk, replacing the water until it is clear with no more buttermilk in it. Pack tightly in jars, or you can form into balls wrapped in wax paper, then foil. Store for long periods in the freezer. The colostrum butter was so yellow, as yellow as mustard, compared to raw butter, which in itself is so much more yellow than the pale butter available in the store.
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