Yesterday was my first REAL attempt at milking one of my goats with the intention of drinking the milk and continuing on a daily basis. I milked our wild white doe with no name. Since I'm almost 36 weeks pregnant, my husband helped get her to the shed and up onto the milk stand. She is not exactly lead broke like my others. The shed is not more than 40 feet from their pen, but we did have a few laying down incidences. Hopefully she will tame down soon so I don't need Curt's help everyday. Once on the stand, she found her grain and calmed down. I brushed her down to remove debris and washed her udder well with a warm, wet washcloth and some vinegar. Then I took a deep breath and began milking!
After I thought I got most of the milk out (it's kind of hard for me to tell when I should stop, but my hands were cramping), we returned her to her goat pals. I brought the milk pail inside and quickly strained it and poured it into a quart mason jar. The milk pail is basically a stainless stock pot with a handle to carry it bucket style and a lid that covers most of the top. My milk strainer came with a large pack of disposable filters. When I milked her again today I got just shy of a full quart. This doe is still very young and will produce a lot more next year after she kids again. Here's the milk from day one.
This goat will save us about $60 a month since until now, we've been buying overpriced organic milk from the store. Interesting fact: Goat milk is naturally homogenized, meaning that the cream and milk are mixed and do not separate out as does cows milk before homogenization. That's great.......until I want the cream. We are going to drink our milk "raw", which is kind of a nasty word for unpasteurized, because of all of the health benefits of raw milk. It's teeming with beneficial bacteria and heat treatment kills them off. That's right, the milk you buy from the store is full of little dead bacteria, both the good and the bad. Milk straight from my own animals that I know was cleanly produced and is only a day or so old has a very minimal risk for any illness. Drinking raw milk replenishes your gut with healthy bacteria while strengthening your immune system. Since it's not heated, all of the heat perishable vitamins and minerals are still intact as well. Also, if I were to pasteurize, that would be one more step, more time, and more dishes to wash. I am all about simplifying things!
Just to be on the safe side, since I'm pregnant and my daughter is just two, we have been drinking small amounts at a time to kind of inoculate ourselves. Probably an unnecessary step, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. We have a gallon of whole organic store bought cow milk to use up anyways, so I've been mixing them. Willow seems to love the milk straight better than store bought cow milk. She says "Yumm! Goat milk!", gulps it down quickly and demands more. I think it's good, but definitely different. It will take some getting used to. It tastes faintly grassy, which makes sense because the goat is eating lush pasture right now. My husband tried a teeny bit in his sugary coffee and said the last drink was "gross". Hmmmm. That's disappointing to me since we've had goats for three years with the plan to milk them in mind. Hopefully he will adjust. The kids and I will drink it though.
I will be ordering some simple cheese making supplies and cultures very soon from http://hoeggerfarmyard.com/xcart/Cheese-Making/ I'll start out with the easy cheeses like mozzarella and chevre and maybe progress from there. My favorite cheese is brie, but it sounds very difficult to make for even experienced cheese makers.
I'm going to save some of today's milk for rebatching some plain soap I made to make a gentle goats milk soap. I'll probably add lavender essential oil to it. What I love about soap making is all of the creativity involved. I can made my soap out of whatever oils I want, and make it in any color or scent. It's fun thinking of things to add as well, like goat milk, coffee grounds, oatmeal, herbs, and flower buds. I even have some Morrocan red clay and some finely ground pumice that I have yet to experiment with.
Unrelated to my goat milking experience, but yesterday we received 40 baby chicks from the post office. I buy them from http://welphatchery.com/ At least 30 are females or "pullets".
Today my husband and I planted a bunch of peas (probably about 200 feet of snap and shelling), carrots (some purple and some storage type), shelling beans, some purple radishes, and lettuce. Hopefully tomorrow I can get my golden beets, rainbow swiss chard, and my red and sweet carrots in. It froze a few nights last week. The "wall-o-waters" protected 5 tomato plants, but there were 4 unprotected and they croaked!
I made some AWESOME chicken teriyaki burgers tonight! I am out of chicken breast, so had to cut some thighs and legs off of the bone, but think it turned out better this way with the darker, more moist meat. I marinated the meat all day in teriyaki sauce and cooking wine. Then, deboned and threw it on the grill for 4 minutes, flipped it and put cheddar on. I cut up a pineapple and used half inch slices (with core cut out) and threw those on as well as some onion slices in tin foil. I toasted the Hawaiian sweet buns, and let the chicken rest for a few minutes. Then, I put a small amount of mayo on the top and bottom bun to waterproof it, assembled my burger and drizzled a tiny bit of teriyaki sauce on. Even our....selective eater Willow said "Mmmm! Yum! Good!". Have a great day everybody!
No comments:
Post a Comment