Our First Batch

My clothes were filthy and my fingers were bloody. I pulled small tumbleweeds of white fur from my beard and let them go in the wind. The left side of my pants were wet from a misguided squirt of milk that had then been licked to death by several different animal species while I had been cleaning up after them. None of it mattered. We were finally making cheese.

Jen and I walked into the hills behind our house (it's almost in the exact middle of the photo) and I told her that I would do the next blog post.

Having never raised livestock or even milked an animal before, I was concerned that our milk quality could suffer. I've since learned that when an animal receives devoted care and a proper diet, nature will do the rest. Wendy is producing over a gallon of fresh, delicious milk a day.

It is essential to remove young goat's horns early in their life, as horns pose a serious health risk for every living being on the farm. While some farmers opt to forgo the brutal task of disbudding, the vast majority agree that far more traumatic experiences often result from keeping horned goats. Daffodil was just disbudded- probably more difficult for us than her. She is quite resilient and jumped out of her stall for the first time right after the vet visit.

Daffodil consumes most of the milk that Wendy produces, so we collect about 70 ounces a day for making cheese. Our first batch of cheese from Wendy's milk was a success.

Why are all of our animals black or white? Maybe we should make oreos instead of cheese...