Life on the mini Farm.

there is never a dull moment here at CBF. It's always something - changes, chores, happenings. Yet, at the same time there is always some comfort and familiarity in the routines of the day. I am not big on winter and despite the insanity of Spring - Fall - I enjoy it. Recently I found that some lovely folks who had bought two of my does a few years back ran into a few walls on their "homestead" and sadly had to give up their goats. Since two had my herdname I brought them back - albeit somewhat temporary! CBF TD SG Pepper

is a daughter of Nizhoni's Joie De Vivre*D/*M out of Piddlin Acres KM Tapdance and CBF CS SG Ammi (means Cumin) daughter of CBF Ent's Whistlin' Dixie and Piddlin Acres H Calm the Storm.
Neither girl had been milked but they were in milk, and came without babies. SOOOO, they had to endure a crash course in becoming milkers! While neither girl has just completely embraced the whole milker thing wholeheartedly - they are actually doing pretty good at it. Pepper is going to go to a new home in the next month and for now, Ammi is staying. Both girls are showing me that they are doing what they were bred to do - MILK. For that I'm happy. Right now we are milking 6 does. 2 are for sale/sold and eventually

We will be down to 4 milkers and a few babies (we hope!!!!) YES, for anyone wondering - we still have several wonderful babies for sale!!!!!
And because we have such an abundance of milk - we are back to making soaps, yogurt and cheese (CHEESE GLORIOUS CHEESE!!!) Something I was REALLY missing those cold winter days without a milker. For those who don't know the story, Priss, our main milker just decided to dry up one day in Oct. (all other goats already dried up) and wouldn't get pregnant so we had to wait until the Nigies freshened in Feb. It was a REALLY long wait! We are now down to Nigies only!
And if our milk abundance wasn't enough, the feathered friends have also stepped up to the plate and graced us with an abundance of eggs as well. Nothing better than farmfresh eggs! And they are beautiful to boot. We are also slowly getting our garden started and PRAYING the cold (unseasonably for NM in April) doesn't damage any fruit trees!!!! Thanks so much for visiting us for an update on our little goat/chicken/veggie farm.

Come back again soon - there's always something going on here!

C is for CHEESE

Like many goat owners, we milk our goats and we make Cheese. We make 3 different cheeses around here: Chevre, Ricotta and Mozarella. Occassionally we will make Feta and we rarely make chevre anymore as we can do any chevre recipe with Ricotta and we like the taste better. We bought Mary Jan Toth's book Goat's Produce Too! The Udder Real Thing which has a lot of Cheese, yogurt, ice cream and (not for the faint of heart/vegetarians) Chevon recipes (Chevon is goat meat). This is our Ricotta draining. We like ours drier than some folks and we like to mix it with herbs to spread on crackers. My favorite herbal/cheese mixes are Garlic and Dill and Mediterranian: Sun Dried Tomatoes, Artichokes, Oregano, Kalamata Olives and Garlic. Also we use our Cheese for making Pizzas and Lasagnes. YUMMO! This post is making me hungry for dinner. If you want any of our recipes - feel free to email me and I'll send you our goat cheese mix recipes for free! I do cheesemaking classes for folks but it's not hard, we taught ourselves to make the cheeses we make - it just takes TIME.
Cheese is probably the most common product we make from our goat milk - along with Soap - but you'll have to wait for that post for S!