Cheesemaking season

So ya know when you're getting 2 1/2 gallons of milk a day and you're making all this cheese and all of the sudden your 2 wine fridges/cheese caves are so completely full that you start making all this stuff (cottage cheese, chevre, butter...) that you can pop in the freezer, but then thats full too! Yeah, me to!

Obviously the only thing to do is to massively upgrade the current cheese cave situation. So we did! Instead of 2 24 bottle wine fridges, we now have one 24 bottle wine fridge and one massive 80 bottle one! The smaller of the two will mainly be where I ripen and age blue cheeses, aka My Blue Heaven! The new big one is where pretty much everything else it!



There is a little over 50lbs of cheese in there and it's not even half full! It's mostly Romano, Gouda and Manchego styles, but with all the new space, I have room to play. I'm making my first batch of Brie of the season right now.

But it's not only cheese making season, it's also the season of struggling against the weather in the feeble attempt to grow fresh vegetables, aka gardening. It's been a weird summer, it gets too hot then it gets too cold (like it is today), and so many of the plants have just stalled out. But at least we have the greenhouse! Everything is thriving in there!



This is year is the great determinate tomato experiment. Instead of growing the normal, indeterminate tomato varieties that vine all over the place, I'm growing almost only short, stocky determinate plants. Since they take up less space, I was able to plant more than I usually do and it's been so nice to to not have to hack back the monster vines. But it is an experiment, I have no idea if the harvest will be similar to other years, but so far everything is looking good!

In animal news, we finally got the girls sheared! Of course it got cold and rainy for the week after they were sheared and they were pretty pissed at me! They've mellowed out and are fitting in really well with everyone else out in the pasture.



We're down to milking Margo just once a day now, but we'll still be milking Cupid twice a day for a while and there is a good chance that Melissa is prego, so she's getting trained on the milk stand and is learning like a champ!



I've got to go flip the brie, then harvest some onions. Hope you all are having a great Sunday!

The Joys of Twice a Day Milking

Life is weird. We just got back from spending a week and half in Chicago, seeing friends and family, pretending for a few days that we lived in the city again, having a great time, and I don't think I've ever been as happy to be home.

So much has changed in the past five to ten years, somehow it feels like you don't notice until your back with people who knew when you were living in a shitty apartment in Hyde Park, eons before you even thought about milking a goat.

But now I'm home and doing something I was thinking about and looking forward, even while having a great time in Chicago: Milking twice a day.

Mostly I was just looking forward to not separating mama's and babies every night. The mornings and nights filled with screaming and crying was really starting to wear on me. So Sunday night Keith and I moved Margo's and Cupid's babies to the pasture with all the hair sheep and the screaming has not stopped since.

Mama's screaming at the top of their lungs to get their babies back. Babies screaming and crying, calling their moms to come rescue them. It's Wednesday and it's finally starting to get a little better, but I have a feeling it's far from over.

Margo and Cupid have been taking out their hostility towards me as often as they can. Yesterday morning I thought Margo was terrible when she peed and pooped on the milk stand, then she proved she could be worse in the evening when she peed, pooped, then just laid down so I couldn't milk her.

Cupid took a different plan of attack this morning when she bolted away from me and out into the pasture. I didn't even run after her. I just got Margo on the stand, where she had the one on one time it seems she needed and Cupid eventually moseyed back, jumping up on the stand in her damn time.

I would have freaked out all of this a year or so ago, trying to get all the animals lined up like they're always supposed to, instead of just leaving the gate open and letting things just work out.




Margo's lambs and Cupid's kids are their own little pack now that they're out in the pasture with the rest of the sheep. In between crying for their mama, the kids are still hamming it up as usual. I'm not sure if the lambs miss their mama or the delicious goat chow they had become accustomed to snarfing down at night, either way, they're always eating!



Two and half gallons of milk is now what I'm getting daily, even if I kinda have to fight the girls to get it. And it really adds up fast! Today I'm making a 5 gallon batch of blue cheese, the biggest batch of cheese I've ever made.





I've already make one batch of blue cheese, a 3 gallon batch that time. Today I had to pierce it for the second time-you pierce the cheese to get all the good moldy blue veins. The guys at the Rouge Creamery said to pierce the hell out of the blues (and they should know, their blues are amazing!), so I did, first 2 weeks ago, then again today. They still won't be ready for a few months, but I think they'll be worth the wait!



Tomorrow I do it all over again, not knowing what to expect. After almost 2 months of good behavior, this craziness is annoying. Hopefully the girls will calm down soon, but who can blame them for being pissed!

Advances in Milking and Cheese making

First, how in the world is it September already!? Can we get about 6 weeks more of mid-August, but without all the fires and smoke this time?

With the beginning of fall harvest upon us, I could talk about all the food stuffs coming out of the garden and all the canning and such I've been doing, but NO! This post is all milk and cheese!

I am a slow hand-milker and Cupid is/was an evil creature, so obviously we needed a milk machine. This season I've been using it to milk Frannie and Margo. It really wasn't much of a surprise after using the machine twice a day for about a year and half on multiple animals, it up and died. I've had another milk machine in mind since I knew this was eventually going to happen, but I had hoped for at least a few more months and was not at all prepared for it's demise.

Turns out that Keith was going to get me my new dream milk machine for my birthday, so I just had to order it a little early!

Say hello to the Segel Milking machine!




Why is this awesome? You mean besides that I don't have to hand milk, like I have been doing very, very slowly every morning for the past week? Well, it doesn't have a motor that can die. Instead, it is a wall mounted, vacuum pump, that is super quiet, fast, and efficient. I freaking loved using it this morning! And it will be so easy to train someone to use it when we're out of town-hopefully!

But what to do with all this milk? This summer I've been making A LOT! of Margochego, but making a double batch has proved kind of hilariously difficult. Trying to press multiple cheese molds with a combination of a cutting board and tupperware containers full of change to weight this down is sadly not very effective! But this is!



Yay for birthday cheese press! The inaugural pressing was none other than a triple batch of beautiful Margochego. It started out looking like this:



And ended up looking like this:



Now they are spending the day in a heavy salt brine. I'll wax them and then try not to eat them for the next 4-6 months.

Not eating them is the hard part. We've cut into a few wheels, and damn they are good! I've got a couple dozen or so wheels of Margochego, pecorino romano, Iberico, and beer infused cheeses that I certainly hope will get us through the winter. Margo (the milk sheep) won't be in milk much longer and soon we'll breed her an wait for her to be in milk again next spring. We will still have Frannie in milk, but with only 2 quarts a day from her, there won't be much cheesemaking after October or so.

But we still have both of them in milk now and I've got to get back to a batch of beer cheese!

Summer Update

I've been meaning to write for a while, but somehow the days always get away from me.

Milking in the morning turns into making cheese, then taking care of garden stuff, then damn it, there's a baby goat/lamb/turkey caught in the fence again, then I milk again, then crap I forgot about dinner and I still have to do evening chores, then it's morning again and we start all over.

But today instead of the unseasonably hot, sunny weather we've been having, it's been thunderstorming for most of the day-I could use a quiet, cool day like this at least once a week!

This crazy hot weather hadn't been kind to the a lot of the garden. Snap peas, most of my greens, even the broccoli seem to just want to be done with growing already, while the green beans are going crazy and I have dozens of sunflowers that haven't bloomed yet but are taller than me!




It's the greenhouse that is exploding, and while we don't have any ripe tomatoes yet, they're not far. We're already getting both hot and sweet peppers, and I wouldn't be surprised it we had ripe tomatillos by next week! <

I can't believe I written since we brought Margo home. It took a while but milking her twice a day is just another part of the routine here. Granted part of that routine is lining Margo up next to the milk stand, then lifting her onto it-twice a day, every single day. One of these days she'll jump up there-or maybe she won't-either way her milk is amazing! I've made a crazy amount of cheese with it, but won't know for 6-12 months, when we finally cut into it, if it's any good! Well that's not competely true, we use her milk in the everyday stuff like yogurt and cottage cheese and those are great, but cutting into an aged wheel of homemade pecorino romanno is a lot more exciting!



Every morning is the same: I hear Margo yelling at me to milk her before my alarm clock goes off. And every day she follows me into the milk stall, knowing full well that she gets milked second. I always milk Frannie first so that I can put her back with her kids as soon as possible in the morning and Margo is usually content to have a little pre-milking snack while I take care of Frannie-but not always!





Oh, and Margo is looking a little different than last time you saw her-she got sheared! I got to help shear her, but thank goodness hired someone who actually knew what she was doing! It is a lot easier to milk her now that she is sheared!



Morning milking is my favorite time of day. There are so many animals in that little stall and they all so loud, and goofy and itching to get outside and start their day.





The duck, oh man the ducks. We had three straight weeks of rain in May and the back of the pasture flooded and it was so deep by the pond that we stopped putting the ducks up at night, I just couldn't get back there. Of course a predator took notice (don't know what) and killed a couple ducks and the surviving ducks seem to disappear into nooks and crannies in the pasture. Then 4 emerged, then another, then another. Then another, but trailing behind her were 6 ducklings! yay! She was cautious of me and I haven't been able to close her up at night to try to keep her and her brood safe, so it's not surprising that only one has survived.

Then today I saw our grey duck that I have seen maybe 3 times in the last month. She was swimming at the edge of the pond when I walked over and I was a bit surprised to see what she had with her!



Hopefully more from this bunch survive!

Time for evening chores!

Adventures in Cheese Making

I realized this morning when I was tending to the cheeses upstairs that I had not really talked about any of the cheeses I've been making-the successes and the failures. At least there have been more success than failures!

The fantastic wine fridge that I got a little before Christmas has been refitted with wooden shelves that are now full of assorted cheeses in various stages of aging.



We've got the farmstead cheese, that I made right before we left for Thailand. I waxed it and it should be ready to eat any time. It should be good-I hope it's good! Waiting to actually taste to the cheese is killing me! Even if the cheese looks right, doesn't mean it will taste right, so rationally I would wait to taste a cheese before making it again....but of course I don't!



I have made two beer infused cheeses so far. The first one is about half eaten and turned out pretty good! I soaked the curds in our IPA, and man can you taste it! But of course I made another one before we even tried the first one-this one with a Stone Belgian Ale. Nope, no idea if this one is any good!



Finally a cheese I've made more than once! This is the second time I've made it to be exact. Drunken Goat cheese is one of my favorite cheeses I've made and as soon as it was gone, I had to make it again! This second time around, I'm going to soak it in wine a little longer than I did last time, and it should be ready to eat in a month or so-and this time I KNOW it's gonna be good! Plus, it's really pretty!



On to a new experiment-Camembert! I'm pretty sure I made this right. For now, I'm just keeping my eye on it. I have to flip the cheeses so the white mold grows evenly-assuming it grows at all. Mold should start growing in about a week-hopefully only white mold grows on these!



The other day I made a cheese that I have been wanting to make for a while. I don't know why it's taken me so long to make it-either fear that I wouldn't do a good job or fear that I would do a great job and I would eat it EVERY day! Well damn, I had it today and it's pretty freaking great! Halloumi cheese-how I love you!



What makes this little cheese so special? It doesn't melt! Fry it up and it get crispy and delicious, without actually melting. Kind of like eating a mozzarella cheese stick-but better! If I was on a deserted island, I would need this cheese...and a frying pan! It is trouble that I can make this is less than a day, with only a gallon of milk!





I should write a post about how I actually make cheese, instead of just reporting about what I've done, and I will someday soon. It's pretty obvious how I'm spending my winter-making loads of cheese! With Frannie and Snowy both hopefully in milk this summer (it's too soon to tell if they are pregnant but I have my fingers crossed!) I'll have more milk to deal with, so experimenting this winter should hopefully really help me out this summer!

Time to go fry up a little more Halloumi!