Monday, March 16, 2015

It's been a while...


I've been pretty silent in blog world lately. It's been a busy month so I haven't taken the time (not that I haven't had time, I just haven't made an effort...) to write a post.


Ginger had her baby! 


 















A little boy, whom she rejected... She's a young, first time mom and the whole process of birth totally freaked her out. She was sure this cute little baby goat was going to kill her. She did have some mixed emotion, she would talk sweet to him when he was far away from her, but if he got close it was death attack. Poor little guy. I think he was okay with it though, he liked being a house goat.

Wait, you had a goat in your house? But doesn't it poop and tinkle?
Yep and yep. I don't mind cleaning up poop and tinkle. Especially not the animal kind. The little people kind, I would totally pass on that if I could. Gross... Diapers make me gag sometimes.
Sure, animals can be dirty and carry horrible disease, but healthy animals don't have nasty diseases to pass along, and with a little watchfulness they aren't dirty either. We had little goat in the house for about a week, by the end of that time he was almost trained to go potty on his towel. We had a couple old towels that we used if he started to tinkle. We would just toss one under him then when he was finished throw it in the wash. Easy peasy. 
He doesn't live here anymore, he sold pretty quick.

Ginger is the easiest goat to milk. She's awesome. 
She had never been milked, but took to it like she has been doing this forever. I had the hobbles on her for 2 days maybe and haven't used them since. She stands perfectly. Although, we did have an incident during one of those first hobble days that ended with both her hind feet in my bucket and her sitting on the ground, but nothing bad since. It was pretty humorous, not at that moment but a few hours later. :)
I enjoy my morning milkings, when I am so tired (not a morning person, at. all.) I can lean against her side and close my eyes, just listening to the sploosh, sploosh of milk into my bucket and the peaceful munching of Ginger eating her grain. I love it.

So far I have made a couple pounds of cheddar cheese and some butter from her milk and cream. She gives the weirdest cream I have ever seen. It is so thick it's practically butter from the get go.
 
I touched it with my finger and when I lifted it off the cream stayed.

 I skimmed off a pint of cream over the course of about a week and put it into the mixer to whip it into butter. Normally cream will go from cream to whipped cream to butter. It skipped the whipped cream stage and went straight to butter. It's excellent butter too. So sweet and smooth. My favorite butter by far. 
 
English muffin bread with fresh goat butter

The cheese is really good too, in my opinion anyways. :) Fresh it tastes somewhere between mild and medium. I don't have to age it. Yay! Cheese faster, I'm good with that.

We picked up 6 baby chickens this weekend. 5 white leghorn and 1 black sex-link. Neither of which are on my chicken wish list, but I'm so happy to have chickens it doesn't matter. They are enjoying their brooder and growing fast (brooder tutorial next week!). We are going to pick up a few more of different breeds this coming weekend then it will only be another week and a half before the ducklings arrive. 


So many animals, so many responsibilities and I wouldn't trade any of it for the world.


Happy days all!

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