The End of the Season is Bittersweet

There were a few bitterly cold days recently. When I came in from the barn my pinky fingers (the only ones not involved in milking) were little blocks of ice. If you had visited on those mornings I would have said that I couldn't wait to stop milking. But in truth, when I begin to dry off the herd it always feels a bit sad. Morning and evening milking becomes so much a part of my life, that I begin to depend on these half hour breaks at dawn and dusk as a quiet time to refocus and reflect. The same is true for the daily routine of cheese making. The simple beauty of cracked pepper on a plate, plain cheese in a stainless bowl, the scent of freshly sliced herbs and garlic, and cheese hanging in a flour sack never gets old. The whole process is so aesthetically pleasing that it feels more like reward than work.

Time away from what we love, however, refuels our passion and the goats have earned the weeks of rest when their only job will be to grow the 1-5 healthy kids which are now brewing in all of our 13 bred goats! So I began by switching to just evening milking and soon will milk every other day and by the end of January, they should all be dried off.

Perhaps the perfect celebration of this transition in the season was our final cheese making class last weekend. Eight eager cheese makers gathered for an afternoon to try their hand at milking a goat, snuggle our kids who are now 8 months old, and to make chevre, feta and cajeta. It was such fun to share the magic of turning milk into cheese with others and we had a ball. When the class was done, my energy was renewed and I couldn't wait already to start all over again in the spring.

There will be mornings in February for sure when I miss the splash of milk in a pail, miss leaning against a warm goat to fight the cold, the soft sounds of a goat enjoying grain, but there will be plenty of cold ones, when it will be just fine to ignore the first alarm and sleep in an extra half hour.  There's always next year.