Learning to milk all over again

CH Twin Creeks DJ Scandal eats grain on the milk stand
while the milking machine collects her milk. The tubes
are clear, so I'll know when the milk is no longer flowing.

We've been hand milking our goats since we brought home Star, our first doe, on Mother's Day in 2002. And the herd has continued to grow every year, even though I've been saying that I need to cut back, because my children are leaving home. I don't really like to milk more than about four goats by hand, although I was milking six a couple months ago. I did milk nine in an emergency, but it took me an hour and a half. I've decided that my heart really is not into the idea of reducing my herd, so I did what had to be done -- bought a milking machine.

You might recall that our first experience with it was not so good. One goat kept trying to lay down. Another tried to kick off the inflations. The third stood there like an angel, but when we removed the inflations, her teats were purple. Obviously, we had no idea what we were doing. I was mortified and feeling terribly guilty. I called the manufacturer to get more comprehensive instructions than what was provided in the booklet that came with the machine. And we tried again.

Learning to use the machine has been complicated by the size of my goats. I bought the "belly pail" set-up, which is a pail that sits under the belly of a big goat. I have little goats, and the pail does not fit under their bellies. Since it would cost a few hundred dollars to switch to a different bucket system, we will have to make do with what we bought.

The tubes aren't long enough to put the belly pail on the floor, and the milk stand isn't wide enough to sit the pail next to the goat -- plus the milk would have to go uphill to get into the bucket if we did that -- so we cut a hole in the milk stand and have the bucket sitting under the milk stand. And because the tubes are not very long, the bucket is sitting on a stack of two-by-ten pieces of lumber. When I hook up the goats with the longest legs, I slide the bucket so that it sits directly beneath them, and when I milk the goats with the shorter legs, I slide the bucket forward, so that it's sitting under their front legs.

It's a complicated system, and it took me at least a week to get accustomed to it. No longer do I simply wipe off the udder, stick a bucket under the goat and start milking. Now I wipe off the udder, stick a bucket under them and put a few squirts into the bucket, set the bucket aside, hook up the milker to the goat and watch the flow of milk. When the flow starts to slow down to a trickle, I massage the udder a bit to get the last of the milk to come down. Then I turn off the milking machine, remove the inflations, and replace the cover that goes on the hole in the milking stand.

Oops, I guess I forgot to mention that we have to keep a cover on the hole, or the goats' legs will go sliding through or stomping through and scare both of us. Also, the little hand milk bucket needs a place to sit when I do the first squirts and the final stripping. What's stripping? Well, a machine can't get all the milk out, and unless you strip the teats after you turn off the machine, the goat could get mastitis, so it's important to do a bit of hand milking to get the very last little bit of milk out of the udder.

And then there's the cleaning. This is what caused Katherine to say no to machine milking. After completing the machine milking routine, you come inside and have to clean the tubes, inflations, and pail. I understand why I've heard others say that machine milking does not save time unless you're milking at least five or six goats. It's a trade off. The machine gets the milk out faster, but it takes time to clean everything. With hand milking, you put the bucket in the dishwasher, and you're done.

So, is it worth it? Yep! After using the machine for nine days, it was time for our classifications, and I needed to milk only the three first fresheners, who were not eligible for classification. I told my husband that I'd just milk them by hand. Before finishing the first goat, I missed the machine! I've never claimed to be the world's fastest goat milker, but after using the machine for more than a week, I felt slower than a snail hand milking again. I was whining like a three year old before I finished the first goat.

In case you're wondering, yes, I did momentarily consider how many goats I could have -- and how much cheese we could make -- now that I have a milking machine. But I really am going to keep the number at less than twenty does. I think I can, I think I can!

Cabbages, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts, oh my!

You might recall that we had some rabbit challenges in the garden this spring. They ate and ate and ate until we buried chicken wire around the perimeter of the garden to keep them out. Fifty cole crop transplants were among the many things we lost to the little rodents, as well as leeks, lettuce, arugula, spinach, and even a few tomato and pepper plants. But we really love our broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts, so I started more seeds a few weeks ago in the basement. Now, what do I do with them? Cole crops like cool weather, and it's been in the mid-90s the past few days and will continue to be in the 90s for at least another few days. And when do I plant seeds for lettuce, spinach, and arugula? They don't usually germinate if it's too hot. In spite of the huge harvest of heat-loving vegetables, this is shaping up to be a challenging year for gardening.

Mother Earth News Fair

In case you are anywhere near Pennsylvania towards the end of September, I'll be speaking at the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs. There will be all sorts of speakers talking about sustainable energy, homesteading, and a lot of the things I write about here on my blog. I've been asked to present sessions on bread baking Saturday and Sunday. To learn more about the fair, click here.  If you really want to see the page about me, click here. And if you're there, be sure to say, "Hi!" I'd love to meet you!

What's wrong with this picture?

If you heard a loud scream at 7:20 p.m. central time tonight, that would have been yours truly. A couple days ago, I cut a lovely bouquet of sunflowers from the garden and put them in the main bathroom. There are flowers all over the house this time of year -- gladiolas in my bedroom, zinnias in the dining room, and so on. Anyway, the sunflowers were lovely, but the petals began disappearing. No, they were not falling off. They were disappearing into thin air. I thought this might be some strange sunflower phenomenon, since I have never grown sunflowers before, and I kept meaning to email my flower farmer friend in Iowa, Miss Effie. I also wondered if perhaps there was some microscopic bugs eating the petals.

Then the answer came to me this evening, as plain as the petals that used to be on the sunflower. I was staring at the emaciated bloom, and it looked like one of those little green things was curling up. Being a tactile learner, I reached out to touch it -- and it moved! And I screamed! It was a caterpillar that was exactly the same green as the sunflower stem. Now, I do want to tell you that I don't normally scream when I meet a caterpillar in its own environment -- as in, the garden -- but I certainly don't expect to find one in my bathroom, and I was startled, to say the least. I swear I could hear him crunching on the last little bit of a petal. Anyway, I grabbed my cell phone and took a picture, since the little bugger seemed to want to say "Hi!" to all of you. See him at about 11:00, waving at you?

This evening, when I went out to cut fresh flowers, I made sure to look all over the fronts, backs, tops, and bottoms to make sure I wasn't bringing in any hitchhikers looking for a free meal!

Getting serious about goats

It's been more than eight years since I decided to get a couple goats, so I could make chevre. I thought that I'd just buy the goats, and they'd make enough milk to make me happy. All goats produce milk, so what could be challenging about that? Right? Wrong!

Of the first three goats I bought, only one had the personality and teats to be a milk goat. The other two were tap dancing on the milk stand and trying to lay down on the bucket. Their teats were too short for me to be able to successfully extract much milk. I learned that all goats are not created equal.

Fast forward to today, and we're milking thirteen does every day, which provide almost 100% of our dairy needs. All of our does have good teats and a respectable supply. Some have outstanding production. Only one is bratty on the milk stand, and she's a first freshener, so we'll cut her some slack. We're on milk test, so we know how much milk they produce, as well as the butterfat and protein content. We've focused on production, personality, and mammary systems, and we're happily headed in the right direction. Almost all of our current milkers were born here.

Bonnie is a first freshener, so we were not able to get
an official score for her, but the classifier did do
an unofficial evaluation. Now that we better understand
her strengths and weaknesses, we can make better
breeding decisions. The goal is always to have kids
that are better than the parents.

Yesterday, we had our goats classified, a program of the American Goat Society. Basically, a classifier -- a very experienced judge who has had special training in classification -- gives your goat a report card. He looks over every little thing, judging it against the ideal and giving the goat a score on that part of its body. And I do mean every little thing -- feet, topline, head, teats, and more. Only does who have freshened (been in milk) at least two times are eligible for classification, because most first fresheners have not really developed a remarkable mammary system.

It was a lot of work to get ready, because we had to clip all the goats, which is pretty time consuming. Add temperatures in the 90s, and any sane person would have questioned whether or not it was worth it. But we persevered, and we had six senior does and three bucks classified. The does and one buck had scores of 86.6 to 89.8, which is "very good" and made me very happy. Two of my bucks had "excellent" scores -- Pegasus was 90.5, and Draco was 91.6, which is about as high as you can get. I don't think I've ever seen a score much higher than 92-point-something.

Although the scores are fun to see when they're good, the more important aspect of classification is figuring out where your breeding program is going. I've said for years that Sherri throws better daughters than herself, and the classifier agreed, because her daughter got a score that was two points higher! That's why I buy the best bucks I can afford. I'm looking forward to having Sherri's other daughters classified in future years. I also learned more about the really fine points of conformation, such as lateral udder attachments, and I have a better idea of which does and bucks will be likely to produce better offspring. It's great to have another opinion from someone with fresh eyes and more experience.

But if I'm surprised about how serious I've become about goats, I'm even more surprised about how serious my husband has become. Regular readers might recall that he's the hard-cheese maker on the farm, and recently he's been complaining about lower cheese yields. I mentioned that I had been mixing sunflower seeds into the goat grain ration, but we ran out of them a couple months ago. A lot of people swear they increase butterfat, but I had never paid attention before. You know what he did? Yep, he went straight to the feed store and bought two 25-pound bags of sunflower seeds!

It's that time of year again

Yes, it's the time of year when I start to freak out. It's crunch time! One of the great things about keeping a blog is that you can see what happened last year or last month or whenever. Well, last year, I didn't start to panic until the end of August after Mike had already gone back to work. This year, I figure, why procrastinate? Let's just panic NOW!

We only have next week , and then Mike is back to the old grind. Margaret has already been at the University of Illinois studying engineering for a year (in case you missed that little development). Jonathan and Katherine are both at the local community college, and after all these years of scheduling the human kids so that someone is always home with me, it's just not going to be possible this year, so I'll be all by myself two days a week. Won't that be fun?

I'm getting a bit of a preview of running a homestead by myself, because Katherine has been in the wilds of Wyoming for the past week. This is her litmus test to see if she has what it takes to be a biology field researcher. I don't even know where she is -- but I do know that they have no toilets or showers or any shelter other than tents. So, Katherine is digging something called "cat holes" to use the . . . um, well, it sounds weird to say she's using the bathroom when there isn't one, but you get the idea. And here I am trying to figure out how to milk twelve goats every day, which would take a total of three hours if I milked every one twice a day. Since some still have kids here, I quickly created a complicated schedule for getting their kids to help me out. I only have to milk ten every morning and six every night, which gets my time commitment down to about two and a half hours total.

But I digress! The real reason for this post is my current panic about not finishing our projects before school starts. Two of those projects have been hanging over our heads for several years -- drain tiles and a potting shed. We need to put drain tiles around the barns and around our house. The barn floods, and the yard around our house floods. I think Katherine took a picture a couple weeks ago when we had a really bad storm -- ducks were swimming in our front yard! No, they weren't splashing or wading; they were swimming! The barns flood every spring and sometimes in the summer if the rain is bad enough, so we really have to get these drain tiles in, because for whatever reason, the flooding seems to be getting worse every year.

And then there is the potting shed. I've been saving recycled and repurposed materials for several years. We have a variety of windows and doors from old houses, as well as roofing material and siding that was left over from other projects. I've lost count, but it's been at least four years! I want to build a potting shed and greenhouse so that in the spring, my house doesn't get taken over by seedlings for the garden. Also, I'm hoping that we won't be losing tools all the time if we have a place to put them, rather than just in the barn somewhere.

And I'm not even going to pretend that we'll be able to get the railing around the deck or the tile around our bath tub or the trim on the windows, doors, and baseboards. Did you forget that we're building our own house? Yes, after five years, it still is not finished.

I'm not sure how the drain tiles and potting shed are going to happen in the next week, and I've learned that I should not get my hopes up about finishing projects once the school year starts. Now, I have to get back to the garden and pick lemon squash, green beans, peppers, and tomatoes -- and then I have to figure out what to do with all of them. I already have 20+ pounds of squash and about 10 pounds of green beans in the kitchen that need to be pickled, canned, or frozen.

Canning peppers

We spent Sunday canning peppers, and this is just the beginning! This harvest reminds me of 2005 when we canned 48 pints of jalapeños. Yes, that lasted us several years, even though we are big lovers of spicy food. On Sunday, we canned five pints of jalapeños, two pints of banana peppers, and one pint of 50/50 jalapeños and banana peppers. The pepper plants are covered with buds and baby peppers, so we will be canning lots of hot peppers in the next month. In the next few days, I plan to make jalapeño jelly, which I love to eat with chevre on crackers. We'll also be making salsa when the tomato harvest gets into full swing!

WARNING: If you ever want to try your hand at canning hot peppers, DO follow the advice to wear rubber gloves when slicing the peppers. It's been at least ten years since the first time I canned jalapeños, but I'll never forget the pain! I had just started slicing the peppers when a friend called. I told her I was in the middle of canning jalapeños, and she said, "I hope you're wearing rubber gloves! They'll really burn your skin!" Well, I wasn't wearing gloves, and my hands felt fine, so I thought she must be a wimp. A few hours later, I was in agony. I did not sleep at all that night, because it felt like my hands were on fire!

Another take on sandwiches

I hate sandwiches. At least, that's what I would have said if you would have asked me that question a few days ago. That was before I discovered the most delectable sandwich imaginable -- worthy of a four-star restaurant.

When I was looking for a pesto recipe, I came upon the idea of using pesto in a sandwich with mozzarella. Hmm, that has possibilities, I thought. So, I baked several French baguettes, and we layered them with homemade pesto, parmesan, mozzarella, and garden-fresh tomato slices. The homemade pesto is merely olive oil blended with freshly-harvested basil, garlic, and our own goat milk parmesan. Although we didn't grow the wheat for the bread flour, everything else was homegrown.

The side dish is golden zucchini stir-fried in unrefined sesame oil with freshly crushed garlic and red pepper. Mike spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon harvesting all of our garlic. Final count was around 40 bulbs of garlic, almost all softneck. For whatever sad reason, the hardneck didn't do very well. Only four of them grew. Oh well, that's why we grow a variety of varieties. Some like our climate and soil better than others. We have enough garlic to last at least a few months.

For more food posts, check out Food Renegade.

Zucchini spice cake

It's zucchini season, and one of my favorite things is zucchini spice cake. (Another thing I love about this time of year are the gladiolas!) Quick note before I forget -- if you use green, black, or gray zucchini, you'll have green specks in the cake. I used golden zucchini, which is why you don't see any green. This is important for those of you with loved ones who refuse to eat zucchini-anything. I seriously suspect that they just don't like green specks in their food, so if you use golden zucchini or just peel the zucchini, they'll never know.

Now, I have to get back out to the garden, so here you go:

2 c. shredded zucchini
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. unbleached flour
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/3 c. water
1 1/4 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
1 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. ground cloves
1 t. ground nutmeg
1 t. vanilla
3 eggs

Mix everything together and beat for a couple minutes. Pour into a greased and floured 9 X 13 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Frost with chevre frosting, if desired:

4 ounces chevre (soft goat cheese)
1 T. milk
1 t. vanilla
2 1/4 c. powdered sugar

This will give you a thin layer of frosting. If you really like a lot of frosting, you can double it. And if you're not lucky enough to have your own goats, you can make a cream cheese frosting, as well. Store the cake in the refrigerator, because it will grow mold within a couple days if you leave it at room temperature, and that's really sad.

Tis the season for eatin'

Homemade chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream
in a baked meringue shell with caramel sauce

I just realized why I usually write so much about food in the summer -- it's because I'm cooking all the time, except when I'm working in the garden or milking goats. I'm looking at food, working with food, and eating like a queen July through September.

Blackberries are in the woods, and Mike has been picking them once a week for the past couple weeks. There are some bushes that haven't even ripened yet, so for whatever strange reason, the blackberry harvest seems to be prolonged this year.

In the garden, we're getting green beans, several types of squash, tomatoes, onions, sweet and hot peppers, and basil.

We're milking 13 goats, which provides us with almost two gallons of milk a day after all the goat kids are fed. That means we are making lots of cheese, as well as buttermilk, yogurt, ice cream, and more. Yesterday, I experimented with a recipe for cajeta. None of the recipes I found were very complete, so I had no idea whether this would take an hour or all day. As it turns out, it took about six hours, which was more than I expected. It's basically a caramel sauce, and all you're doing is reducing goat milk, sugar, and a tiny bit of baking soda until it turns golden and sweet! This is what I used:

2 quarts goat milk
2 cups sugar
1/2 t. baking soda

I whisked it all together and put it on the stove to simmer or gently boil for hours and hours. When it was a light tan color, I tasted it -- perfect dulce de leche for coffee -- so I poured off enough to fill up my cream pitcher, and this morning we used it for our coffee. It reminded me of those artificial creamers that I used to use when I lived in the burbs -- except I knew this didn't contain any multi-syllabic ingredients that were unpronounceable. I continued boiling the rest of the mixture on the stove, and a few hours later it was caramel colored. It was evening by then, which meant it was time for me to milk goats again, so I turned off the stove, because I didn't want it to suddenly turn into fudge while I was gone.

The caramel sauce in the above photo is what I wound up with.