Oops, I meant to take some pictures at work today for this post but I forgot. I guess I was too busy working my smug butt off. Anyhoo, got up before dawn this morning, took a hot shower and made some coffee. Put on about a million layers of clothing and headed out into the deep blue morning.
By the time I got to Fraga it was light out and I helped Jan package chevre for about an hour...spooning the fluffy white cheese out of a metal bowl and into a small plastic tub, one has to be mindful to leave as little air in the bottom of the tub as possible. After weighing the little cheese gift, I flatten in the top to make it look ultra smooth and creamy before placing on the plastic lid.
Packaging takes a lot of time, and time is money, and I will be getting paid to package plenty of cheese in these coming months. As with learning any new skill, I was very aware of the fact that I am in the slow beginner stage. After packing up the cheese for Larry to haul off to Portland for a farmers' market this afternoon, Jan and I began milking. The goats were less well behaved this morning than they were last night, but all in good fun.
There are many steps to milking and one must be mindful, mindful, mindful because a mis-step could cause you to lose the entire batch of milk...such as forgetting to "strip" the goats. That's when you hand milk the first few squirts into a "strip cup" because that's where the bacteria likes to hang out...in the first 15 milliliters.
Once milking was done (it takes about three hours with set-up and clean-up) Jan made me some delicious eggs from their farm, and we had a cup of hot coffee to warm our souls and minds (farmers like the stuff) and then we headed back out to the cheese room to do some clean up before tomorrow's big cheese-make.
All in all it was another fun day on the farm! Still so much to learn, I'm a happy camper.
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