Turning Grass into Bacon - A Work in Progress

Step one - Find a little piece of land that is very green, to call your own.

Step two - Procure Goats that will happily eat your grass

'Sup?

Step three - Milk Goats 

Step four - Share your goat milk (upcycled grass) and bakery outlet bounty (wheat = grass) with your three little piggies.

What $20 will get you at the bakery outlet.

Three little pigs, Baykin, Porkchop (Choppy) and Prosciutto (Shootie)

With a lot of nutritious slops, some hiney scratchin' and a few months time, these little 30 pound "weaners" will end up as 250 pound "finishers". At which point I'll be switching their diet from primarily protein-intensive goat milk, bread and kitchen scraps to a diet that is comprised mainly of windfall and foraged apples and pears. At least, that's the game plan as it stands now.

By the time the girls head back to school in the Fall, the verdict should be in on whether or not all of this pig wranglin' and raisin' was worth the trouble. Stay tuned... 

The Goatses with the Mostest

Dairy time is about done for us here. The does have all been dried off, and have very likely already been  re-bred by our escape-artist of a buck, Buckley. So we'll be buying milk until February at least, but not having to milk in the cold and wet makes the trade off quite fair.

On a day like this, when I'm missing my goat milk in my coffee, I come across a post from a fellow farm chick, Matron at Throwback at Trapper Creek. She has a gorgeous Guernsey, Jane, who gives her four gallons of milk per day. I have a mild case of cow envy.

Sure, we'd drown in 4 gallons per day, but the stuff is golden and just...amazing. I could make a whole different assortment of cheeses, and enough butter that I wouldn't have to hit up Costco whenever a baking jag hits. And we could feed the extra to the pigs that we plan to get this Spring. Oh, the things I could do with all that milk...

But.

But, we only have 3 1/2 acres.

A full acre of that land (the bog) is under water 9 months out of the year.

We have well water and a septic system, which means that we basically recycle the same water constantly. I try really hard to maintain balance in those systems by not overwhelming the septic with chemicals, phosphates or tons of cow poo. Goat poop is in "jellybean" form, and can be cleaned up/moved easily, and breaks down slowly. A giant cow pat in the rain will end up running off into our bog, and eventually our septic/well system. Simply put, it would just be too much for our little foothold to handle.

We've already committed to pigs this coming late Winter/early Spring. And their care and "output" will be plenty for this little farm to take on. The reason that we green-lit the pig idea, rather than the cow, was primarily because there is an end date to it. The pigs will be with us for no longer than 9 months, at which point we can evaluate whether the cost/work/impact was worth the trouble.

So, for the foreseeable future, goats will be where our dairy begins and ends. And really, these little gals do a pretty bang-up job of providing us with milk for our coffee, little batches of snowy white butter, some really intense aged parmesan, and the secret ingredient for our lovely homemade soaps.

These are the gals who make it happen. Thanks again, girls.

Bazaar Season Breakdown

I learned a lot with last year's bazaar season - affordable, useful objects sell, and spendy-ish, upscale items don't, at least for me. I tried to learn something from that and to focus my time, energy and money on making more of the items that seemed to be in demand last year - washcloths and bike helmet earmuffs, while eliminating the high-end (and high overhead!) apparel items that didn't sell - scarves, mostly.

So this year, I made roughly triple the number of washcloths as last year, 35. We sold all but 7 of them. We sold roughly the same number of bike helmet earmuffs as last year, but, same as last year, the "feminine" colors (pink and purple) didn't move. Lesson learned - people like their noggin warmers in gender-neutral brights and earth tones.

Our Booth at Lincoln Winter Market

I did not offer any jars of jam for sale this year, as I'm not sure that a) With new cottage food laws in place, and me not yet certified, that my selling any sort of prepared foodstuff would be be entirely legal, and b) $3 for a half pint jar might sound like a reasonable price to the buyer, but the maker/sellers breaks even at best.

This was our first year making and selling our soaps and accompanying frou-frou. The soaps, especially the Homegrown Lavender, sold like hotcakes, even at $5 per bar, and with a LOT of competing soapmakers at both bazaars. Ours was the only goat milk soap that I saw for sale though, so between that and what I think of as our handcrafted, cute, genuine factor (imperfectly cut bars, hand wrapped packaging), I think we did pretty darn well and recouped our initial investment in soapmaking supplies and materials.

Our very first batch of soap - Orange Cream

The accompanying products (scrubs, fizzes) weren't super sellers, but the profit margin per sale makes them worth keeping. I'll make a few next year, but focus more on the soaps and washcloths, as they are they main attraction.

Another note with regard to the goats milk soap - we made a few potentially valuable contacts with some fellow crafters and soapmakers who expressed interest in buying/trading for some of our goats milk to include in their products (NOT to consume!). Imagine this goat thing actually paying for itself someday - crazy! Maybe I can use this to justify my longing for alpaca/fiber goat/sheep ownership to the spousal unit? One critter at a time...

These numbers are rough, as I'm admittedly a shoddy record keeper. Just to give you an idea of how a tiny, homegrown hobby can maybe(?), someday(?) grow into a small business...

Last years sales - $185
This years sales - $326.75 (Plus another $50 incoming for custom orders)

So, we doubled our sales from last year to this. With any luck, next year we double this years numbers at least.

We hope to get our farmstand up and running sometime between now and next Summer at the latest. Hopefully the products, business cards and relationships that we made and exchanged at these bazaars will be something of a springboard for our little stand. I think we've discovered a niche, now to expand on that, explore further ventures and make a little money while doing what we love. The future is bright. :)

Countdown to Bazaar Season 2012

Less than a week to go before bazaar #1, the Lincoln Winter Market. And so, I'm running around in a tizzy, trimming and wrapping soaps, tucking and tagging knits and trying to plan my table layout. These bazaars are a lot of fun, but man, are they a lot of leg work too!

Tonight's job - wrapping the Orange Cream soap.

It is slightly labor-intensive, having to wrap each bar in parchment, band them with card stock, make a label for the front of the bar (big props to Tehlia for making me the gorgeous fluffy-butt hen stamp!), affixing a hand-written ingredient list and tying the whole bundle up with string. No wonder I only got 8 wrapped before I called it a night.

Tomorrow, lots more soap wrapping and sugar scrub mixing and packaging. If this stuff doesn't sell, we'll have a lifetime supply of soap & exfoliants. We'll be the cleanest, smoothest farmers EVER. ;)

Homegrown Lavender Soap

Bill and I made our second batch of soap yesterday, we're calling it Homegrown Lavender.

The soap is still caustic, so I can't poke and prod it like I'd like to, but I can smell it and take its picture, so viola.

It looks like most of the poppy seeds have floated to the top, so there'll be a scrubby side and a non-scrubby side to this soap. Interesting...

As you can see, the color is not perfect. We chose to use all-natural scents and tints in our soaps, so they tend not to be the technicolor explosion that synthetically colored soaps are. I'd rather err on the side of boring at this point. Trying to imagine myself standing behind a product made with laboratory-designed scents and colors makes me squirm. Our beautiful goat milk deserves better than that!

As much as I'm not crazy in love with this color, I have to concede that it has improved drastically overnight. When we first poured it into the mold (a fancy term for a cardboard box lined with visqueen), it was the brownish-grey of elderly oatmeal.

Six more weeks until it's ready to use and sell. We'll be right down to the wire as far as selling this at our bazaars. I'm going to buy some pH strips at the homebrew store so that I can make doubly sure that this is completely saponified and 100% safe and gentle before offering it for sale. And while I'm at the homebrew store I might pick up a little citric acid, so I can give these homemade bath bombs a go too. They use a lot of the same ingredients that we already have on hand for soap making, and I think they'd be a neat complimentary product to offer alongside the soap and knitted washcloths and scrubbies.

It's a little weird that my Postmodern Milkmaid ventures have taken a toiletry-esque turn, after having been pretty much all about apparel last year. Hopefully, using the lessons learned from last year's sales, and the unique resources that are available to us through our little farm (goat milk, homegrown botanicals) we'll get a little leg up this year, and set ourselves apart from some of the other makers and crafters.

Six weeks until we know for sure if any of this worked, let alone whether or not people find it appealing. That niggling little worry should be great for my insomnia!

Back to knitting my face off in the meantime. ;)

The Weekend Loometh

Maybe loometh is too dark a word? The weekend... cometh aggressively(eth)? Let's just say we're packing a whole bunch of homesteady-type activities into the next 48 hours.

On Saturday - We're trying our first batch of homemade goats milk soap. I'm still on the hunt for the perfect recipe. I'm leaning toward something creamsicle-ish with sweet orange oil and vanilla beans. We'll see if chemistry is my friend!

Also on Saturday, we'll be planting a few trees and medicinal perennials - Beaked Hazel (nut), Echinacea, Yarrow and a few others. I scored big at a closeout sale on water-wise plants. Not that a shortage of water has ever been a problem here (this is Boggy Hollow), but plants that don't mind a little accidental neglect on my part will most definitely do better in the long run.

Lastly, we plan to list 3 or 4 of our goats for sale this weekend, which could translate to the unparallelled joy that is wrangling disgruntled goats during an epic downpour. Yay?

Sunday, it's salsa-jam 2012. My girl Kristin and I scored 25 pounds of free, perfectly ripe tomatillos via craigslist, so we're going to devote the day to making enough salsa verde to feed a small army.

Free tomatillos. Thanks, Kathy!

Spending the day chopping, stirring and jarring up salsa may not sound like hard work, but after 8 or 10 hours of salsa fest, me and my good friend, giant jug o' red wine, would beg to differ.

Here's to a rainy, drainy, productive weekend!

Use it or Lose it - Buttermilk & Sweet Potatoes

This week's featured "everything must go!" ingredients are-

*Jewel Yams (actually a variety of sweet potato), about 2 pounds
*Goat Buttermilk, 1 quart
*Sour Cherries, 4 pounds
*Goats milk, 2 1/2 gallons
*Rendered Leaf Lard (pork), 1 cup +/-

It almost goes without saying that this time of the year, we'll have more milk than we know what to do with. Things could be worse! :)

This is our second year of having this very fortunate predicament, so we're slowly but surely learning how to use goat milk in things that we'd otherwise have used store bought cows milk in (white sauces, custards, etc.), as well as using it to make some of our own dairy products (cheese, butter) to replace or at the very least, reduce the amount of cow's milk dairy that we buy & consume.

We've also started socking a little bit of milk away in the deep freeze, for those dark days when the gals are lactating no-more, and we have a hankering for something creamy.

So, we popped 1/2 gallon of milk into the freezer for later use in cooking and/or soap making. We also pitted and froze the sour cherries for use in my very favorite jam, Summer Solstice preserves.

1 and 1/5th items down!

The buttermilk was homemade, using a quart (1/4 gallon) of whole goat's milk, warmed to 86 degrees, then inoculated with buttermilk culture and left to ripen overnight. What a delicious difference that little culture makes!

I used up the 3/4 of the buttermilk making a triple batch of buttermilk waffles that I also squirreled away in the freezer for a rainy day.

The rest of the buttermilk was used, along with 1 1/2 cups of the pureed yams, and 1/2 cup of the lard (in place of half of the butter), in a double batch of Martha Stewart's Sweet-Potato Biscuits. Heaven. on. earth.

As you can see, I used a small-mouthed mason jar ring in lieu of a proper biscuit cutter. It worked just fine, and that makes one less thing I have to hunt for in my kitchen. ;)

So, having frozen the milk & cherries, baked the biscuits and made the waffles, I'm left with 1 3/4 gallons of milk, 1/2 cups of lard and 1 cup of sweet potato puree. I put the puree into a silicone freezer tray and chucked it into the freezer to set-up. I'll pop out my yam cubes and bag them up, to eventually be used in soup.

As for the milk, I'm going to try and bribe/sweet talk Billy into making a double batch of 30-minute mozzarella to be used on Friday Pizza Night. I'll hang on to the lard, since I'm not exactly under the gun to use it, like I am the more perishable goods on my use or lose hit list.

Whew! That was a lot of baking and dish-dirtying for one day. I'm wiped! Now, excuse me while I go snarf down my third butter and jam smothered Sweet Potato biscuit. Being the chef has its perks. :)

My Fridge Runneth Over

How can it be that we've only been milking our girl, Sidney, for about a month now? I have a serious case of milk fatigue! Our fridge is so full of half-gallon jars of goats milk and cartons of eggs that there is practically no room for anything else.

The batch of feta that I made last week came out too soft, so I'm challenging myself to a Chopped-style cook-off. I have eggs, goat milk & smooshy feta galore, plus a few items in the produce drawer which have entered the "use or lose" zone.

My available ingredients include-
*Feta, 2 lbs
*Eggs, 4 dozen
*Whole, Raw goat milk, 3 gallons
*Golden beets with greens attached, 1 bunch
*Dill fronds, 1 bunch
*Raspberries, 1 pint
*Cherries, 3/4 lb

I have (tentatively) on deck-

 *"Spanakopita" deviled eggs (Feta, dill & beet greens) Uses maybe 4 ounces of the feta, 15 eggs, all of the beet greens, and maybe 1/4 of the dill.

 *Goat's milk Chocolate pudding Uses 3 cups of goat milk and 3 eggs.

 *Roasted beet & feta salad with raspberry balsamic vinaigrette Uses all of the beetroot, all of the raspberries, and another 4 ounces or so of feta.

So that leaves us with cherries, dill, a pound and a half of not-well-formed feta, and a crapload of eggs & milk. Cherry ice cream? Feta & dill omelettes? Aidez-moi!

In addition to all of these dishes, I see another super cheese-a-thon in my near future. Maybe a harder cheese, that I can set to press/dry/age and forget about for a little while, rather than being under the gun to use before it goes sideways? I'm also thinking of starting a (weekly) challenge for myself and anyone else who might be interested called "Use it of Lose it", about creative ways to use/preserve/share the bounty from our gardens, critters, foraging, or even a really good sale at the market. Who's in? :)

More Mamas on the Way

Through one of the most annoyingly persistent and bitterly cold Winters that we've had in a long time around here, my hard-working hubby finally finished fencing our back pasture. It was no small task! Being able to turn the goats out of their pens and into the larger pasture now means - less money spent on feed, the goaties get to frolic and exercise more than they did in their pens, and we're getting more goats!

As I've mentioned previously, my cousin is looking to get out of the goat raising business, and so is bringing her two favorite bred does to live with us for the foreseeable future. They are Alpines, which is a full sized breed, and are significantly bigger than the minis that we've cut our teeth on. This is the big leagues!

Alpines are French/Swiss in origin, and are one of the most popular dairy goats in the United States. They make great milk, and a LOT of it. They're also just great little critters all around, as I'm learning in my crash course on the Alpine breed. Dairy Goat Journal puts it nicely -

"Alpines are a versatile utility animal. Great milkers for both home and commercial dairies, Alpines produce a high volume of milk. They have the ability to produce over a period of one to three years between freshenings or milk through. This produces valuable year round milk and reduces cost by not breeding every year. Alpine milk has a high cheese yield because of good butterfat and protein content. They produce well on pasture or in dry-lotted hay fed conditions. They are known for being exceptionally hardy, curious, and friendly."

All good things! Our only concern is that they might be a little rough on our smaller goats, but we have the option of separating them if that is the case. No bullies allowed on this farm!

More goats, more babies, more milk = crazy exciting times in the Hollow. :)

Cheddar Check-in

August - Day 1 - Still in the mold


Day 2 - Just turned out of the mold and air drying


September - Just waxed


November - After 12 weeks of aging. It is still "young", quite sharp and definitely goaty. The texture is firm and creamy, and melts nicely.

I only made the one cheddar, as I had no idea what to expect. Cheese making is a lot like wine making in that you don't really know what you've got or if it's even edible until months or years down the line; making it imprudent to spend a heap of time and raw material on a pursuit that may be all for naught.

Anyways - this one turned out! It's too strong for me and the girls, but Bill has been enjoying it, so come Spring, when our does kid and the milk is flowing again, I'll make another one or even two.

By the way - this cheese was made using Ricki Carroll's Farmhouse Cheddar recipe. Everything was by the numbers except for us using goat milk instead of cow's milk, and my improvised cheese press (I have a real one now) meant that this cheddar didn't get pressed with quite as much weight as was recommended in the recipe.

Quick and Easy Chevre Cheesecake

Things are finally starting to wind down on ye olde farm for the season. Our does are nearly dried off - hallelujah! - but in the mean time, we're still getting a few quarts of milk each week. Between the milk, and eggs that we're getting from our hens (who are all in ultra-high gear and laying like maniacs), I've been desperate to find ways to use my abundance of dairy and eggs. What luck, then, that I should have stumbled upon a recipe for a Fresh Goat Cheese Cake that, in addition to using more than an half-pound of chèvre, also calls for a half-dozen eggs per cake. Bingo!

You can absolutely use store-bought goat cheese for this recipe, but in the event that you, too, are swimming in goat milk, and want to go full-on Martha Stewart about it and make your own goat cheese for your cake, it just so happens that I wrote up a homemade chèvre how-to for todayshandmade.com just last week. Crazy how these things come together... ;)

Either way - try this cake! It is so much simpler than any other cheesecake that I've ever made and would work equally well as a sweet or savory dish. I'm working on figuring out a spinach, artichoke, tomato version and will post it here if I ever get it hammered out to my liking.

Anyway - get cooking and enjoy!


Fresh Chèvre Cheesecake-
Adapted from Goat Cheese Cake with Mixed Berries by Emily Luchetti

•11 ounces chèvre (or other mild, fresh goat cheese), allowed to come to room temperature
•¾ cup granulated sugar
•1 ½ teaspoons fresh lemon juice
•1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
•1 teaspoon real vanilla extract (or as is my preference, vanilla infused bourbon)
•6 large eggs, separated*
•3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter a 9-inch cake pan, then dust with granulated sugar.

In a medium bowl, combine the goat cheese with the granulated sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla extract, and beat at medium speed until smooth. Add the egg yolks, 2 at a time, incorporating them completely before adding the next two. Lastly, add the flour, beating it into the cheese mixture at low speed.

In another bowl, and with clean beaters, whip the 6 egg whites until firm, but not dry (firm peaks that are smooth, not lumpy).

Fold 1/3 of the beaten whites into the cheese mixture at a time, taking time to incorporate the eggs well before adding additional whites.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan, and bake for about 40 minutes. (I began checking mine at 3-4 minute intervals after the 32nd minute, just to avoid overcooking.)

Remove after 40 minutes, or when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool, dress with a topping of your choosing and serve. Enjoy!

Instead of the berry topping suggested in the original recipe, I used what I had an abundance of on hand at the time – apples. I peeled, cored and sliced three apples into eighths and stewed them with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and still more of that lovely vanilla infused bourbon. The resulting topping was a little soggier than I’d aimed for, but the taste was pure Autumn apple goodness.



*If you are using homegrown eggs like I do, you may opt to measure your eggs by weight rather than by number. Since they are not cookie-cutter factory farm produced eggs that all look and weigh the same, there will be more variance in size and weight. You should aim for about 2 ounces (in-shell weight) per large egg called for in your recipe.

Cheesy Suggestions?

I have a few gallons of goats milk in the fridge just waiting to be put to good use, and I'm going to use it to make another cheese. So I thought I'd ask, what kind of cheese should I make?

A) Another Parmesan!
B) FetaFetaFetaFeta
C) Chevre (most of which I'll have to share, because Bill's out of town, and this is not my favorite cheese)
D) Cheddar
E) A metric ton of Mozzarella
F) Something else - you tell me!

And maybe, just maybe, I'll finally document a cheese making from beginning to end this time. Maybe.

Bill's Parmesan

This was taken on day #3. It's looking good already, no? Waiting is going to be hard.

Greetings from the Land of L'oeuf

Put up, frozen, and preserved of the season's foody offerings this week so far -

*Spicy Pork Broth, 3 quarts, frozen
*Blackberry Fruit Roll-ups, 5 lbs worth
*Blackberries, 3 pounds, frozen
*Spinach & Goat Feta Pierogi (Pitaha), 45, frozen
*Rose Petals, Bachelor Buttons, Nasturtium and Lavender flowers - dehydrating them like they're going out of style, cuz they are.

If my back isn't still dogging me, I'll can some blueberry & blackberry jam next week. I also want to make up some traditional Pitaha, with some gorgeous potatoes that were grown by my friends Gabby & Daeg.

I also need to make another batch of feta, or else drown in milk. Same goes with the eggs. I might just be desperate enough to try freezing some, though that still seems weird to me.

I googled "recipes that use a lot of eggs" and got some interesting results. It seems like the suggestions fall into two categories -

#1 - The Dee-hhuuuurrrrs. Have you thought of making an omelet or some deviled eggs? Dear, simple, simple friend. OF COURSE I'VE THOUGHT OF THAT. The trouble, you see, is that I have six dozen eggs and counting, and if my family somehow did manage to muscle down 72 onion-laced eggs, the air quality in North Olympia would suffer a mighty blow, and no one wants that.

#2 - The "Butterified". Pound cake, custard, mousse. All yummy, and all calling for as much or more butter and sugar than eggs. There has to be a way to make something with these babies that doesn't give us diabetes or coronary artery disease, right?

So I guess that I'm going to make some more egg noodles to freeze, and maybe try drying some as well. We'll have scrambled eggs for breakfast and dinner a few times this week and see what kind of damage we can do to the stockpile. Maybe I can start whipping them at the psycho DB that flies by my house on his Ducati at 120 miles per hour?

Nah, he's not worthy of my juevos, only my seething contempt.

By the by, this evening will make 48 hours since the mega-clutch went into the incubator. I've been candling the eggs nightly, because I'm maniacally curious about their inner goings-on. I can't tell for sure, but I *think* I see some progress in their development. There appears to be a pencil eraser-sized spot of increased density in the middle of several of the yolks. No dead giveaways, like blood vessel development, but I think that might still be a few days out.

Here's a pic I took on day one of our one and only double-yolker in the lot.



I don't know what the odds are of twin chickies making it, but I'll keep candling and keep you informed about any "eggciting" developments. ;)

Sorry about that. I need to get out more.

My First Farmhouse Cheddar!

It just came out of the mold, and is now sitting on a bamboo cutting board under the watchful eye of Lorelei, the Goat in a Coat, to dry for at least three days. After it has dried well, I'll be waxing it. It is ready to eat in as few as 8 weeks, but supposedly tastes best when aged for at least six months.

So somewhere in the neighborhood of Valentines Day, I should finally get to find out whether or not I'm any good with cheddar and/or whether goat's milk cheddar is better or worse that the good ol' cow cheddar that I was raised on. Fingers crossed...

P.S. - Check out the picture of The Goat in the Coat and other amazing batiks by my friend, the lovely and talented Lisa Telling Kattenbraker, at her Etsy shop or at lisauntitled.com. :)

Recipe: Homemade Cajeta (Goat Milk Dulce de Leche)

-1 Quart fresh goat's milk
-1 cup sugar
-1/2 vanilla bean, slit lengthwise
-1/2 cinnamon stick
-1/2 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1/2-1 tsp of water

Heat the milk, sugar, vanilla bean and cinnamon stick over medium heat, in a heavy pot. Stir constantly until the mixture begins to boil gently.

Remove from heat, still stirring, and add your dissolved baking soda. The mixture will froth/foam up a bit, but can be stirred down fairly easily.

Return the pot to the heat. Reduce heat slightly (I change the setting from 5 to 4). Continue stirring until you feel like your arm is going to fall off, about 45 minutes to an hour.

At some point during your endless stirring, you should notice your milk mixture beginning to deepen in color. The intensity of flavor increases with cooking time/darkness, so you can decide when the color, flavor and consistency look right to you. I stopped mine at the point where it coated the back of my spoon, and was a butterscotch pudding color.



Pour your finished cajeta into a glass container - you DON'T want to put molten-hot liquid candy into plastic, trust me. The cajeta will keep in the fridge for about a week. Let me know if yours ever lasts that long. ;) You'll also want to get your pan soaking in hot soapy water ASAP, as the caramel is like hardened epoxy once it has cooled completely.

Your quart of milk should have reduced down to about one pint of caramel. Cajeta can be used as a topping (try it with coffee ice cream!), a little sweetness in your coffee, or as my friend Libi says, poured straight down your throat. Enjoy!