M is for MILK, MILK TESTING, MILKING STARS

This is the Certificate of Joie's for earning her MILKING Star.
of course, right now she is our Star Milker in the Nigies and we are proud of her accomplishments - if you'd like to see the numbers - click on the certificate - it should enlarge.
We have high hopes for Joie's daughter, Malina and Dixie to get their stars this year at Nationals. I think the club Milk test is too soon after kidding - I may not be able to get them on test then.
Also, I am currently trying to go through the program at Langston DHI to become a certified MILK TESTER for NM along with one or two of my friends. IT should be fun as we will be able to do 305 day testing or 1 day tests. HOPEFULLY that will mean a lot more goats with stars in NM.
AH MILK - the whole reason CBF NIgerians even came into existence. We wanted our own fresh clean milk and dairy products - as well as soap. This is our milk shelf in the fridge - yep -lots of milk and this is only from ONE goat (the Oberhasli) Imagine how full this will be this summer when we are milking an Oberhasli, Alpine, and 3 Nigies. I don't think the new BIG refridgerator will be big enough!!!LOL. Actually the Alpine might be leased out to a couple who wants milk but not the hassle of kidding etc. and I am considering putting one more milking Nigie up for sale which will be HARD. Need to see how the two youngsters compare - the best milker will stay and the other will become available.
WE love the MILK and all the wonderful products we get to make: cheese, yogurt, kefir, ice cream as well as the milk for all of our cooking is our own wonder goat milk.

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!