Raw milk

Hi Erica,

I just started receiving raw milk from a herdshare program and my husband and I don't drink the milk but are experimenting with making cheese, butter, etc. So far, we've successfully made a simple farm cheese and butter. Since we get buttermilk from the butter making process, I tried making sour cream and it was a failure. It tasted really bad. Suggestions? I guess this is a two part question - we also gets lots of whey from making cheese and I've used some in lacto-fermentation and I feed some to the chickens and dogs. I tried making ricotta and only get a miniscule ball of cheese - is that because I skim the cream for other uses? Other suggestions for the whey?

Thanks so much! Anne