A Visit to St. Joseph’s Secondary School in Foxford
On Monday I was invited to a secondary school in Mayo St Joseph’s Secondary School in Foxford, to tell them about our entrepreneurial journey, the properties of sheep milk and diversification in Irish agriculture. The students in the class were great, every one of them got involved in the blind taste test I set up . I had an unmarked tub of Greek Yogurt with zero per cent fat and an unmarked tub of Velvet Cloud. 14 students picked the Greek yoghurt and 28 the Velvet Cloud Live Yogurt !
Explaining the Milking Process to Curious Mind
Then I also got in the post the cutest card hand drawn and handwritten by a little girl called Mary Brigid who I am guessing from the fabulous writing was about 7 years old. She wanted to know how you milk a sheep. So I have written back to her explaining but in case dear reader you are unsure here is what I said to Mary Brigid
“We milk sheep on our farm the same way farmers milk cows. Every day the sheep come into the milking parlour and we put clusters on their teats. When my son was your age he said it was like putting a hoover on them which then sucks out the milk, which I think is a very good description. The milk is then collected in a huge, big tank and afterwards, we use it to make our mild creamy yoghurt. Then the sheep go back outside on the farm eat the grass and make us more milk! They don’t mind being milked at all in fact they queue up in the morning, because we give them a treat of nuts while we are milking them, and if we didn’t milk them they would get uncomfortable and their udders would be too full and they wouldn’t be able to walk around properly. There is only one difference between how you milk a sheep compared to a cow, sheep have two teats and cows have four! “
You can see a video here of the beautiful card
