Molds with draining chevre cheese curds.

Due to persistence, my muscles are getting stronger and my hands aren’t cramping up so much. But turning all this goat milk into other dairy products is still a lot of work!

Thankfully, I’ve discovered the wonders of using freeze dried bacterial cultures to separate the curds from the whey and produced some good-tasting chevre. I’ve also got a good technique down for making yogurt.

What’s even better is that my neighbors have learned how to milk and people are signing up to take a morning or evening shift here and there.  Not needing to tend to Ophelia’s overflowing udders, we were able to go out of town for a bit last weekend and things seemed to go along pretty smoothly.

Now I’m actually contemplating breeding my other goat next fall…

Ophelia

For years I have dreamed about having my own milk goats.  I imagined I would casually stroll out to the pen, and with a light touch, the milk would flow into a waiting pail.  Cheeses would magically appear and my children would soon be sporting goat milk mustaches.

Reality hit with a thud in April when Ophelia had her kids.  I had not trained her to a milking stand and when one came in the mail she was terrified of it.  Of course, Lavender–Ophelia’s non-lactating buddy–thought it was great and spent hours leaping on and off until the metal began to separate from the battered sides.  With lots of coaxing and licorice flavored treats, I was finally able to get Ophelia to put her head through the stanchion and I was set.  “Hey, we got lucky!  I said to my husband “She has two streams of milk coming from one of her teats.  We can milk her twice as fast.”  Soon I found this was actually a genetic abnormality meaning that I shouldn’t breed her again and her babies couldn’t be used as studs. More…