Cheesemaking

It's raining today. Combine that with my bum ankle, and I'm not doing much outside today. I'm glad I got out yesterday and saw the new lambs. I can't imagine anyone looking at baby animals and not smiling. It always makes me so happy when I see them. We are also expecting Scandal the goat to kid around May 2, so she is getting close. She had quads last year, and she's pretty big again this year, so ... might be quads again. We'll just have to wait and see.

I just had to add another picture of the new lambs! Spotted lambs are so cute! You don't really breed for color with goats because their main purpose is dairy, but with the sheep, you're breeding for wool, so I can indulge my desire for beautiful colors and spots!

Today I put my soft goat cheese into the molds to drain. Last night, the milk was mixed with the culture and sat overnight to separate into curds and whey. With only a gallon of Nigerian dwarf milk, I can fill up eight of the chevre molds, which equals about two pounds of cheese. A gallon of standard goat milk only fills up four, because their butterfat is about half what the Nigerian milk is. I did four molds with plain cheese, two with dill and garlic, and two with fresh basil that I had chopped up in the food processor. Then the molds sit on a cookie rack on top of a baking pan, which collects the whey as it drips out of the molds. You can't see it in the picture, but the plastic cups actually have holes in them where the whey drains out. Really, we could eat it at any time now, but we will definitely be eating it tonight! If you take it out of the molds before it's done draining, you just wind up with whey on the plate as it continues to drain. But we're all so starved for goat cheese after several months without it that we don't care!