Settling into a Delicious Routine

It's amazing how something totally new and overwhelming one week can soon become a natural part of life. It seems impossible that I have been milking goats for only 5 weeks! The twins are now 7 weeks old, big Dill is 8 weeks old. Twice a week I am cooking up a variety of mouthwatering chevre which never lasts long. I am now up to 7 cups of milk a day and soon will be milking all the goats twice a day...look mom 2 hands! An adorable family came by the other day to see the kids and put a deposit on Dill and Zeus, who they will name Toot and Puddles. We would have been heartbroken to let them go, except they were in many ways like a younger version of ourselves and there is something cool about imagining all the fun in store for them as goat owners. They will go to their new home at the end of the month. On an especially overzealous day, I ordered 500 deli containers so I can begin giving my cheese away to friends and last night we made a delicious new version: chevre on the bottom layer, covered with fresh pesto and a few slivers of roasted red peppers. YUM! Now as a reward for delicious goat cheese at dinner, we let the whole herd out to play. If someone starts running, they sprint after in a huge mass that can only make you laugh. They will run back and forth to the barn after the kids until they are all panting and ready for bed. Check out the video for a laugh. Chianti is still a mystery milker. To get any milk out of her, I need to hold up her udder with one hand just behind the teat and then squeeze with my free hand. This results in a slow process. I am still not getting the amount of milk that I should be. Everyone talks about the Quart for each milking per Nigerian Dwarf goat, but I only seems to get 2 1/2 cups at best. When I start to worry about this I have to laugh recalling just 5 weeks ago when I entered the kitchen proudly carrying my 1/3 cup of milk. Now a little more than a month later, I have a fridge full of fresh cheese and another month off from school. It's hard to worry too much!

The Long Awaited Chevre!

We added two goats to our herd, GoGo (short for Happy Go Lucky) is in milk and Tiger Lily is a sweet yearling from a good milking line who we will breed this winter. This brings us to a total of 8 goats, 3 are being milked daily. Next spring 4 will be able to have kids so we will have a barn full of babies. Because of this purchase, and my increased experience after a full month of milking, we are now in the milk! Looks like we are averaging 7-8 cups a day which means we have enough to make chevre. As the new goat settles in and our babies are weaned we will easily be able to double this amount I think. So much dreaming and planning that went into getting to this point that the cheese we made and brought to our friends' summer party last night was way more than cheese, it was a celebration of the whole past year!

The process takes almost 24 hours. After the evening milking, we put 2 days worth of milk in the pasteurizer. This beast has been laying in wait in the cupboard for some time and was ready to get to work. The directions are very old school. At the point where everything is plugged in and ready to go it says: "Now go about your business until you hear a loud buzzer." Every time I was inclined to stare at it in the 20 minute process, Chris would laugh and tell me to "Go about my business." While there is hot debate about the benefits of raw milk versus the health risks, I decided to play it safe with my cheese. I want everyone to feel completely comfortable eating it, including little kids and my older relatives whose immune systems are not as strong. I figure the fact the our cheese is made from milk that was in the goat hours before makes it infinitely healthier than anything I could buy, so I can give up the potential health benefits raw milk offers.

After pasteurizing I added the chevre packet of starter bacteria, rennet and malto dextrin. This premixed and measured packet is sold by New England Cheesemaking Supply. Later in the summer I will experiment with my own mix, but for now this makes the process super easy! Although there does not appear to be anything happening, the magic begins instantly. I cover the milk and set it out in the kitchen, and by the next morning after milking, it has formed into a substance that looks and smells a bit like yogurt.When I moved the pot, the cheese moved as one jiggly mass.

At this point I knew we were going to have cheese, but there was still another 8-12 hours wait until we could taste the product. Almost exactly a day after we had begun the process, the curds had stopped dripping whey and we were ready to add delicious herbs and arrange our cheese plate. Tess and Lila have both been helping with the milking this week and are getting really good, so we divided the cheese into 3 parts and each made our own delicious recipe. Tess used fresh and dried Dill with a citrus blend of salt. Lila used Herbs de Provence and salt, I used fresh ground black pepper, salt and rosemary. 3 girls + 3 goats + 3 days=3 delicious cheeses. We watched the cheeses like they were our children all the way to the party and observed with proud smiles as all three disappeared within minutes after arriving. MISSION accomplished! It was smooth, goatie and delicious. Honestly, I think is was better than store bought goat cheese.