5-27-10

INKY CAP

GOOD GIRL LINDA

MILKING GOATS

SEE THE BABY LLAMA?

NOW YOU DO

This is the time of year where female goats are giving milk, and we've volunteered to milk the goats every morning during our stay here, at 6:30 am. Unlike cows that can produce milk year round, goats only give milk during the spring after birthing. Milking the goats is not a mandatory activity, but we want to partake in this daily routine for a few reasons. First, how can we expect to master milking techniques without practice? Second, how can we gain an appreciation for animal foods unless we help create them personally? Lastly and probably most importantly, it gives us an opportunity to spend individual time with Dave and pick his brain about farming and life.

Milking goats is similar to milking cows; the techniques are the same from cleaning the teets, bribing them with grain in order to position them in a manner conducive to sitting beside them, pinching off and rolling your hands down the teets to extract milk, and struggling to get them out of the barn after milking is done. The goats impatiently walk in because they want the tasty grains and are unwilling to wait their turn. They also are eager to lighten their load of milk, which under "natural" circumstances, would have been drunk by the babies during the wee early AM mornings. After milking is over, it's tricky to get them out because they want more grain.

With fresh milk in hand, it was time to make cheese. Hooray for cheese making! Today our gallon of milk, combined with the previous two days worth of milk gave us a grand total of 3 gallons of milk, which is the amount necessary to make a batch. The process is very simple: heat the milk to 190 degrees F and then add vinegar or lemon juice (basically anything acidic). Then you lightly stir the mixture, which causes the curds and the whey to separate. This settles for several hours, then you drain off the whey first using a colander, then a cheese cloth. We added fresh rosemary from the garden, fresh basil from the greenhouse, and a dash of salt and pepper and voila, CHEESE. Our first attempt had a sort of cottage cheese meets feta cheese consistency, because we squeezed too much whey off and didn't bother trying to shape it. If we had a cheese press, our finished product would be markedly different. We are making authentic home style cheese, not fancy cheese. But hopefully we'll be able to make 3-4 more batches before we go and by our last attempt, we'll have a winning approach.