Feeling the Heat of October

This has been such a beautiful and bountiful summer! And I'm so happy it is over. I can not can another jar of salsa, dehydrate another tray of cherry tomatoes, or freeze yet another bag of zucchini. I am just done. Or I wish I was.

Besides a handful of wickedly hot peppers that have yet to ripen, the greenhouse is closed for the season. There is a little more variety out in the garden thanks to the cold hardiness of root veggies and broccoli, but still, the garden it past it's prime too. But there is a new season that is just getting started and at times it is deafening. Goats in heat.

It's like having a bunch of teenagers with their hormones raging! It started with little Frannie first. She was so loud in the middle of the night that Keith went out to the barn to check on her. Obviously she was just fine, but Keith has to pop in ear plugs for the rest of the right. For the next two days, Frannie and Randy tried their best to get through the electric fence that kept them seperated. They only succeeded in getting repeatedly shocked by the fence. Then as quickly as it started, it was over and the pasture was quiet again. Until yesterday.

Now it's Cupid's turn. I didn't even know that goats that are lactating could go into heat, but oh yes, they can. Cupid is not interested in anything she is usually interested in, like her favorite past time of eating all the food and making sure Frannie and Snowy don't get any. All she want's to do is try to get Randy's attention so badly I think her tail might wag off. We're even getting less milk from her because she's eating so much less-dear god make this pass quickly!




Only Snowy is left. I can't really imagine her any louder or more affectionate then she is on a daily basis, but I know it's going to happen!

This is all just happening a little earlier then we want it to. We are planning on breeding Frannie and Snowy in December, hopefully we don't miss our window of opportunity!

We are going to breed the sheep in November. They all constantly have crushes on Big Sam, so I'm not worried things not working out there! And the ladies are starting grow their winter coats, love these girls!



With all this talk of breeding, how can I forget to talk about the adorable offspring!

Phoebe has been adopted but we still have the boys! They live with the lambs now are just as adorable as ever!!




The lambs are getting big. Even the triplets are finally putting some weight on! And then there's Bessie, who's so huge it looks like she ate one of the triplets!



At least with pretty much all the vegetables done for the season, I'll be able to work on perfecting my cheese making this winter. Until spring, that is, when we'll just be starting all this over!

Thank you Russia!

What the hell do you do with over a gallon of goats milk a day? Everyday. Single. Day. I've been trying to figure that out.

There are the cottage cheese experiments, the yogurt culturing, a lot of chevre in the freezer. Still, there is always more milk in the fridge.

With all of this, Keith has been pushing for cream. Separating goats cream is not the same as separating cows milk. Cows milk cream floats to the top and you just skim it off-how easy! For goats cream you need a centrifuge separator and what I had read was that these can cost $500-1000. Yeah, that was not going to happen! But where there's a will there's a way-thanks to Russia!

Keith found a Russian cream separator on Amazon for about $150 and really, how could I say no? Of course I want cream, and butter too!



This did come with instructions in English too, but they really don't look as amazing! This came in the mail yesterday and I can't believe that I had to wait until today to use it! It did take a little time to put together, mostly because it seemed too easy and there seemed like there were extra parts (there aren't!). Put together, it's a lot bigger then I expected it to be! It reminds me of Sputnik. Spherical, but quite pointy in parts.



Now that it's all clean and set up, let's get it to work! The milk has to be warmed to about 100 degrees before putting it through the centrifuge. I warmed up a gallon and a quart and started it through.





Slowly at first, then more quickly, the cream comes out the top spigot and the skimmed milk comes out the bottom spigot. I wish there was more cream! But still about a cup and half of cream is better than nothing!

I've got 2 quarts of skimmed milk culturing into yogurt. I'm not really sure how that will turn out, since it is the first batch that I have made without whole milk, but I don't doubt it will be edible!

The cream is still too warm to be able to tell how thick the cream really is, but time will tell! On to more experiments!