I'm sitting in "the little room" off my living room which I have turned into a futon-napping and desk-work-doing place. I am enjoying a delicious cup of coffee and slowly working my way down a short-stack of buckwheat pancakes and some fresh fruit--currently (as in, at this moment) my favorite breakfast. I would love to make some kind of savory pancake with buckwheat as well. With leeks and corn and mushrooms perhaps.
Yesterday was Monday and I spent 9 hours working in the dairy. We made Feta, Farmhouse and Goatzarella. It's amazing how in their youngest stages, all cheeses are so super similar! Jan, Steve and I all made some dumb mistakes yesterday. Cheese-making is a craft that concerns itself with precision, and luckily none of the mistakes we made mattered a whole lot-- they just caused a lot of water to be on the floor. But still, I for one would like to get that shit down pat so that my mistake rate hovers around 0%.
It's fun and messy work, scooping out curds and dumping them into a cheese-cloth lined bucket, cleaning out all the vats and pasteurizers, doing tons of dishes, squishing pounds upon pounds of cheese around to break it up before pressing with my begloved hands. I probably washed my hands 45 times yesterday. 5x/hour for 9 hours. Maybe even more. 90 times!
Yesterday it was sunny and at times when I was crouched over a sink full of dishes I would look up at the chickens out the window, who seem to be going at it more often than not this time of year (for this I do not blame them). I missed being outside amongst the animals, chilling with the goat girls. Well, as early as 10 hours from now I may be singing a different tune...
Other thoughts on the mind: getting a goat of my own. When I got Roscoe, my dog, I told myself I didn't want to get a puppy. Cute as they may be, a puppy is too time-consuming for where I am. So I opted to get a crazy baby teenager, who is turning out to be a very fine animal (unless you're a bicycle). With the goat however, I think I would like to get one as a newborn kid and raise it up myself. This is something I need to do more research on because I know some bottle-fed babies (I'm talking about you Sheba) who have become big pains in the butt, but I also know that's how you get the kid to bond to you. And whoa Nelly does it work! Once you start bottle feeding it, that kid will run up to you bleating with glee.
Anywho, I want to teach said kid (a doeling) to pack. Imagine. Backpacking with a day pack and a handsome dog and a pretty Saanen pack goat, for whom you need bring no food (they just browse and eat shoots and leaves), plus one goat can carry more than you (as a woman) can. When backpacking a woman shouldn't carry more than 35 lbs for the sake of her back, a goat can carry 40. And they just follow you (once you train them). Plus, back on the farm she can just be my little milker. So that's my plan. It will take some time. Presumably I'll get this goat as a kid next spring and breed her in the fall and then she will be in milk spring of 2015. and that's a million miles away...
Today I will probably going into work for a few hours in the afternoon to pack up all my stuff for the farmers market, and to press the Farmhouse, which was hung overnight to expel whey. Also on the docket on this rainy day...a rainy dog-hike, plenty of talk radio and house-work. And who knows what else! I would like to go to a good book store in Eugene and look for books on Goat Packing, I'd also like to pick up Michael Pollan's new book Cooked.
That is all.
Yah goats
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