Wild Blue Cheddar

I made Blue cheese. A long time ago. Blue cheese is easy to make and quite complicated to age. And it takes a long time. My first effort isn't very good, it is really mild, not the right texture (more like chevre), and has no veins of blue in it. It doesn't taste bad, it tastes like a very mild blue.

I learned a lot. The biggest thing I learned is that if you do this you are likely to get blue mold loose in your cave. I think it might be real hard to avoid this. I knew this might happen, and I tried very hard to be careful. I kept it in containers I got specifically for this, and the cheese was never exposed to the cave. But you have to turn it over a lot, and you have to handle it. I think mold got on the lid from taking it on and off. I understand that once you have blue mold in your cave it might be impossible to get rid of it. So it might be a good idea to avoid this cheese for awhile, or at least be really paranoid.

So I had a little chunk of cheddar aging in there, and it didn't have a tight enough seal. It got blue mold. It was about 5 weeks in the cave before I noticed the blue mold. This was a complete accident. I was curious, so I left it alone until it was about three months old. It was an amazing cheese, naturally. It had the flavor of cheddar, plus strong blue, plus a bit of bite at the end, it was really great. It had a nice texture too. I wished it had a bit more salt in it. It's long gone of course.
I've been trying since to replicate it, and the picture is my first attempt. It gets scraped off every so often, this is before that. I think it's kind of pretty. But I love blue cheese. I've got several others working on this in the cave right now, but this is the only one I've tasted. It's not up to that original accidental little piece, at least not yet. I think I'm going to be trying to do this forever. If it could be consistent I think I really would try to find someone to make it commercially. Not me. There are quite a few people making goat cheese commercially in New Mexico.

Unless you really want to experiment and play, and are willing to do the work and take the time (years), and love the flavor of blue cheese, I recommend staying away from blue mold. And if you are all of those things, you may need two caves.

This is going to be my last post, the month is about over. I have really enjoyed doing the blog, I hope reading it hasn't been too big an ordeal. It was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it for any of you that haven't signed up to do it yet. I'm going to miss doing it. But I'm also looking forward very much to hearing from the rest of you!

Have a wonderful weekend, and a terrific year! I hope everyone's kiddings are perfect. Mine don't start until the last third of March.

What worked better

I only have time for a short post this morning, but I want to say on the subject of aged cheeses that a couple things worked really well.

My first and only try at gouda turned out really good. It has to be brined, which is an additional effort, but the actual cheese making itself is a little easier than cheddar. I used the Home Cheesemaking recipe for this, and it was good on the first attempt. You can age this cheese a long time and it keeps developing.

At the end of the season last year I made a colby. That is also easier than cheddar, and it turned out well. I'm going to be doing colby a lot more next year, maybe instead of worrying about cheddar. It will be interesting to see how it ages, if it gets sharp like cheddar does.

I'm going to talk about the blue cheese adventure next.

Have a wonderful day!

Cheddar

I made cheddar about a dozen times last year. Most of them had a decent flavor but were too dry. I followed several recipes, and I'm not sure I have a favorite. Here's a picture of one of them. with one edge cut off.
I am reluctant to put a recipe here because of copyright issues. So here is a link to a cheddar recipe http://www.cheeseforum.org/Recipes/Recipe_Cheddar.htm. I haven't made this recipe, but the essentials are the same. Goat milk recipes usually recommend keeping things about 2 degrees cooler than cow milk recipes in all the temperatures. The cheese forum has a load of recipes. I just found this page and you might not need a book, just this place. It looks like it needs a thorough exploring. One nice thing about this recipe is that it calls for a gallon of milk instead of two, so you could make it with less milk, or you could double it if you have plenty of milk. It would need the smaller of the two molds that come with the Hoegger cheese press if one gallon of milk was used.

The first cheddar I made was done in a pot on the stove. That turned out to be very impractical, when you get to the part about raising the temperature of the curds from 86 or so to 100 or so no more than 2 degrees every five minutes. This is really hard to do on the stove, if not impossible. But I tried. We ate the cheese. The next time I did it in a sink of hot tap water, that was still too fast. It was about then I got the Weck style canner. That made all the difference in the world in terms of making it easier.

If you don't have one, this should be done in a sink of hot tap water, and not as hot as it can be. In order to get anything to heat up that slowly you need a temperature outside the pot that is no more than 6 or 8 degrees warmer than what is in the pot. You can do the initial warming, up to the 86 or 88 degrees (F) on the stove, but this slow increase in the temperature just won't work on the stove. In the sink you will raise the temp of the hot water slowly as the temp of the curds in the pot goes up.

This is the toughest part. And it gets easier after you do it a few times.

Cutting the curd takes a little figuring out too. You need a long narrow bladed knife, and some instructions, which you can find on the cheese forum also. I think you can find everything you need to know there.

All of these recipes and pages and lists say that cheddar and the other cheeses that are traditionally waxed, must be waxed. I don't know if this is true or not. I waxed the first one, and it was pretty good for a first attempt, but it got mold under the wax. Waxing is not a simple thing. There are good directions for it that come with some of the wax when you buy it. But in the end it looks like it has to be dipped to be done well, not brushed on, and it has to be dipped more than once, and the wax has to be pretty hot. There are some volatility issues. It's very messy. I am going to address this again this year.

But last year I packaged all the rest of it in foodsaver bags to age. Everyone, literally everyone, says this is unacceptable. Some of them say the cheese has to breathe, and can't in plastic. This is surely true, but I don't think it breathes in wax either. Most of the people who make cheese are rigorous traditionalists, and might not be willing to see such a big change. But I haven't done enough of it to know yet if it will turn out good. This year I think I am going to vacuum seal half and wax half of the same batch of cheese to see what kind of differences there are. And I'm going to do it more than once. And maybe while doing that I'll figure out that it isn't as hard as I thought. But I have never dipped any.

Foodsaver bags aren't always great either, sometimes you don't get a good seal, sometimes there was still some whey coming out, most of the time it had to be redone at least once for one reason or another. But it didn't get mold if the seal was good. Ever.

More about mold next time.

In the meantime, check out http://cheeseforum.org/

And have a wonderful day!

Sand Hill Cranes

I'm interrupting the cheese talk for this post to tell you that the sand hill cranes, who winter over here, are leaving now. So if you live north of New Mexico you might be seeing them soon. There are thousands of them around here, and when they leave they all honk a lot, it is very noisy. They circle in huge rings, higher and higher until they are thousands of feet in the air, all of them at once. When they're high enough they head north in huge flocks. It is very noisy and sort of sad too, they are one of the wonderful things about winter. Here's a picture of them from near my house a few years ago. I took it with the zoom all the way out, so unfortunately there's a lot of clutter in the background that looks really close. But still one of my favorite pictures. It must have been in the fall, since it is green.And since I'm off topic anyway, this is a spring picture from a few years ago of flood irrigation in the NM river valley, from a hot air balloon. Most of the time it isn't this pretty.
I'll be back to cheese next time. Have a wonderful day!

Hard Cheese

There are a few things you have to have to make hard cheeses. Most of them require 2 gallons of milk, so you need a big enough container for that. It seems like an 8 quart pot should be big enough, but it isn't. It needs to be stainless steel or enameled. I use a 16 quart milk bucket that I got specifically for this purpose, but I don't use it on the stove top. If you have a Weck style canner with a drain spout for pasteurizing that is a perfect device for making cheese. I got one specifically for cheese, but not until I knew I really was going to keep doing it.

The other thing you need is some way to press the cheese. You need to be able to get up to 50 pounds of pressure. I got a cheesy press, and it was what I used the first time I pressed any cheese, but I was afraid it was going to break, and I had a terrible time getting the cheese out of the mold too. I ended up getting the fancy press from New England Cheesemaking, and I love it, but if I was going to do it again I would get this one: http://hoeggergoatsupply.com/xcart/product.php?productid=3268&cat=35&page=1, and get this with it: http://hoeggergoatsupply.com/xcart/product.php?productid=3265&cat=35&page=1. This is an excellent cheese press at a great price. They sell the same press with plastic molds for $10 less, but it would cost much more than that to buy stainless molds relative to plastic ones. Either way the molds can be boiled to sterilize and also put in the dishwasher at high temps. If those links don't work let me know in the comments and I'll try again.

If you are inventive and build things you can make your own cheese presses, but you need a way to gauge pressure and you need molds. A set of stainless steel molds like the ones that come with the Hoegger press will likely cost as much as the press does. Having said that, there are places on the web with instructions for building them.

I talked already about thermometers. I use two digital probe thermometers while I'm making cheese, one in the milk and one in the water, since I'm using a canner and water bath to heat the milk. If you do it on the stove one is all you need. One is all you need anyway, I use two because I have two. You can use regular thermometers, but the ones I have don't look accurate, and they are a lot harder to use.

You need recipes. I like Ricki Carroll's "Home Cheesemaking", and also "200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes" by Debra Amrein-Boyes. There are also recipes on the web, although if you Google for Cheese recipes you will get recipes for cooking dishes using cheese. I have a favorite email list for goat cheese that has a lot of recipes in the archive, if anyone wants that link let me know in the comments and I'll put it there.

You need cheesecloth, starters, rennet, and cheese salt. You can use pickling salt I understand, but not table salt, and especially not any salt that contains iodine, it apparently interferes with the process of making milk into cheese.

And you need time. And patience. It isn't hard to do, but it is very labor intensive, especially in the beginning.

Next time I'll talk about making a cheddar.

My experience with Camembert

The first thing about aged cheeses is that you have to have a way to age them. I got a small refrigerator, I was lucky to find one that has no freezer, I don't know how hard that might be to do now. Then I put an external thermostat on it to control the temperature. (Cheesemaking supply places have these.) The temp in a cheese cave needs to be higher than any refrigerator will stay. But it needs to be relatively constant. I think a freezer might be a better choice for this, because it doesn't have two temperatures to maintain.

Another thing to think about is that if (when) mold from mold ripened cheeses gets loose in your cave, you will have a time getting rid of it. If you can ever get rid of it. I have a story about that for later. You might want to put off mold ripened cheese for this reason.

I have not made what I would consider a successful camembert. I love the commercial camembert I have eaten, and brie as well. Camembert is quite a bit easier to make, at least with the recipes I had at the time, (Home Cheesemaking, by Ricki Carroll) So I made camembert. I made it from pasteurized milk and also from raw milk.

I followed the recipe as carefully as I possibly could. Because I live in the desert, aging cheeses at the humidity levels required is very difficult. The humidity here is sometimes in single digits, and usually around 20%, you can get the humidity inside a little refrigerator up to about 45% with a pan of water. It needs to be over 90% for the mold growth you need for these cheeses. So they have to go inside a container inside the "cave", and then you just hope for the best.

The camembert turned out looking like camembert, and it got "oozy" in the center, too runny at least once. I think that was from not getting enough whey out of it. It was more crinkly in the rind than commercial camembert, and had a much stronger flavor. It was a little too strong for me. My mother liked it a lot, I think her taste buds are going and it takes stronger flavors for her to really be able to taste things. It's possible we should have cut it sooner.

I looked for a picture to link to, I haven't got one, and I couldn't find one, although I know I have seen them on the web.

I read the book "American Farmstead Cheese", by Paul Kindstedt, about the processes involved in making cheeses. It has no recipes. It is an amazing book for understanding what happens to turn milk into cheese. I can't claim to have understood it, but even so it was very helpful. It is very technical in parts. It also has some discussion about commercial cheesemaking. I'm going to read it again, after I get through "The Ruminant Animal", which I got recently but have not opened yet. That looks really tough to me also.

Anyway, the Kindstedt book has discussion about raw milk cheese and bacteria, and provides some data. All raw milk cheeses that can be legally sold in the US must be aged at least 60 days. The bacterial levels after 60 days are much lower, for a variety of reasons. Camembert is ready sooner than that, and can't be aged that long. So I got a little leery of it. But I'll try again one of these days. We ate it and mother kept it for so long I had to take it away from her and throw it out, and no one got sick.

Kinstedt presents a lot of data about food borne illness from cheese, and it is very rare. Plus in almost all cases it was from cheese made from pasteurized milk in enormous quantities and was traced to contamination after pasteurizing. But next after that is the soft mold ripened cheeses like camembert and brie. Overall it seems to always come back to milk handling.

So I kind of recommend skipping to cheese like cheddar once you want to go beyond chevre, mozzarella, and ricotta. I will definitely try the soft mold ripened cheeses again, just not quite yet.

Next is cheddar.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Chevre

Two or three years ago I started making cheese. I started out with chevre, of course, and it has been a big success with people.

You need a good thermometer, that's accurate and easy to use. I started out with a Polder probe thermometer. These have a digital read out and a cable, and a probe. They're made for meat in the oven, but work really well for cheesemaking. The weak point of these is the probe, they quit after awhile, sometimes fast. I've tried three kinds now, and I wrap the connection of the cable and probe with that white stretchy plumbers tape. I think this helps the probe last longer, but they still are the weak point. (If you're going to use the probe in a roast, be sure to take that tape off first). You also need a way to hang the cheese, I have a chain hanging from my ceiling over the sink.

I think most of the other equipment you need to make chevre can be found in most kitchens. Or you can substitute something.

You need a good 8 quart pot, stainless steel or enameled. Aluminum will not work.

Making chevre is really easy. You heat the milk up to 86 degrees, I do this on the stove, stirring constantly. Add the starter and a bit of rennet, stir it in. Let it sit overnight in the covered pot, and in the morning you have a curd. It needs to be over 70 degrees F, in the winter I put it in my oven with the oven light on. That's all it needs to be warm enough.

You scoop off thin pieces of the curd with a slotted spoon, into a cheesecloth lined colander, and then hang the cheesecloth over the sink. Or you can put it in molds to drain. Let it drain 6-10 hours and you have chevre.

You need to make sure all the equipment that will touch the milk/cheese is sterilized. I boil water in a big pot and put everything in it. I also boil water in the pot I am going to warm the milk in, since I am not pasteurizing it. If you want to get a permit to sell chevre it has to be made from pasteurized milk, no matter where you are in the US, it's a federal requirement. If you don't usually pasteurize the milk you use at home and want the cheese for home use, I have had no issues with making it from raw milk. It keeps about a month, which is quite a bit longer than people say it will. My milk keeps at least two weeks, I never keep it longer than that, so I don't know how long it actually keeps. I don't intend to ever sell cheese, or milk either, so I don't generally pasteurize any milk.

How long it keeps and to some degree how it tastes depends on how the milk is handled. Other things can affect the flavor, such as the individual goat, and perhaps also the breed of goat, and maybe the diet of the goat. If the milk tastes different the cheese will too. I have not noticed any difference in flavor or texture between pasteurized and raw milk. Lots of people, especially Americans, are terrified of "goatiness". My chevre is not goaty at all. In France "goatiness" is desired. I think you have to cultivate a taste for it if it isn't common in your culture. But "goatiness" is a feature, not a defect.

You can flavor it any way you want, I like to add red chili powder, granulated garlic, and a bit of cumin and salt, in between layers. Fresh basil leaves are good too, but fresh herbs limit the amount of time the cheese will keep to less than a week.

Chevre is very easy to make and hard to mess up. If you are just starting I recommend getting the chevre starter packets from New England Cheesemaking supply http://www.cheesemaking.com/. They contain a mesophilic starter and the right amount of rennet for a gallon of milk. After you have it down you can move on from there. I hear you can use buttermilk for a starter, but if you do you need to add rennet. The "rennet" in the grocery store isn't the right stuff.

Next I will talk about my Camembert adventure.

Have a wonderful day!

One pic for the day

Good morning everyone! I was sure surprised and happy about the Super Bowl! I normally could care less and I don't follow football at all, but it was so neat to see how excited people were in New Orleans and what a positive boost it gave them. And they won!

Anyway, this is AJ and most of the girls and wethers. He does chores for me and keeps my yard from turning into a jungle of weeds in the summer. This winter I haven't had to haul water most of the time because he does it. He lives next door.

I'm distracted and excited because we are going to build a barn! Advice is welcome, I have just started thinking about it, and it will take quite a while to do it, but it's really exciting. A milking room!

Have a wonderful day!

Dogs

I started life as a dog person. As a child all I really wanted was a dog. This was strange because no one else in my family was a dog person, even my extended family. I got a dog when I was 12. In 1990 I got my first Great Dane. This one is Bell, she is at least 11 and 1/2. She was a rescue and she was three, but I don't know where she was in the third year. All my previous danes live to be around 9, they don't usually live very long. So I am amazed with Bell. She is hanging in there with me. She is what is called a blue dane.



This is my young dane Daisy and me, she is almost three. I got her as a pup when I went to get Madame and Triscuit in Missouri. She has had a bit of training and is very smart. But she's got a strong prey drive, and I am very careful to make sure she never gets in with the goats. Now that she is really an adult this is easier, she spends a lot of time asleep on the couch. She was active and easily bored as a young one.


This is Daisy with my grandson Zach when they were visiting last August. I wish I knew how to fuzz out the clutter behind them. My kids have a lab-shepherd cross names Neeley, and when they went home Zach was really happy to see her, and he said "she sure is small". He spent a lot of time lolling on the couch with Daisy, and she was heartbroken when he left. I expect she thought she would get to keep him.





Here is Daisy being dignified:

Have a wonderful day everyone! Tomorrow I'm taking the day off.

Madame

This is Madame, I just finished milking her last night, she is pretty much dried up. She will kid in late April, I am hoping for a buck from her this year, and a doe would be nice too.
This is my all time favorite goat picture, I have used it all over the place. Madame is probably the most photogenic of my goats, although her wether Nonami is also. His face has grown a bit crooked in the last year, I guess it's a good thing I didn't keep him intact.




This is Madame with her 2008 kids when they were very young, Nonami and Zelda. Nonami is her wether, and the other one is a doe who has gone to Texas. Zelda is apparently spoiled rotten there.

This is Madame with her 2009 kid Bolt.
He is living with a friend here who also helps me with goat things I can't easily do alone, like shots and hoof trimming.

This is a recent picture of Nonami and Madame. My current wethers are smaller than the first one I had was. I am thinking it might be because I neutered them at a week old. The first one was 3 weeks old. I'm going to test that this year and neuter them at 3 weeks.





Here is a picture of Madame that shows her shape. The next one is her udder, in 2009 after her second kidding.


I think these are all my goats, tomorrow I am going to talk about my dogs a little.

I hope you all have a great day!

Triscuit

And her kids. Triscuit (and Madame) came from Sue Huston when I went to Missouri in 2007. She is a 4th generation kinder. She has had five kids so far, and I still have them all. She has a lovely udder, and this picture hints at it. Triscuit is very friendly and a little bossy. She runs to the milking stand to get milked, she really wants her grain. She is second in line in the herd order, and has contested that a bit with my big nubian Tsu, but they settle. She is half the size and younger too, I don't think she's going to win that contest anytime soon.


She had two kids in 2008, PipPip and HooRay! Here is Pip in a tub. Pip is due to kid in March, I am hoping for a lovely udder like Triscuit has and teats that are a bit bigger because Tsu is her grandmother. Pip is smaller than any of my other kinders, but she weighs about the same amount as Browner. This picture of Pip and Browner shows the size difference, Browner is taller and longer. They both weighed 80-85 pounds before they were bred. Pip is the shyest of my kinders, and sort of a loner. I'm hoping she will have a doe that will stay with her and that she will be happier. I'm probably imagining things, but I would like to see her kid snuggling with her.

This is Ray, he is the biggest kinder I have. I'm pretty sure he is over the size standard, but but he has a nice long body. This year I will get a better look at how his kids are going to turn out. I don't have any of the kids he sired last year.




In 2009 Triscuit had triplets, the first picture is Trude and Simon, a couple hours old. They are out of Domino. The second picture is Pickles. She and Trude will be bred this fall, Simon is destined for the freezer. Last year I learned how to socialize kids, and all the kids from 2009 are friendly and can be handled pretty well, even though they were not bottle fed.


I'm having some trouble getting these posts to format the way I'd like, so please forgive me the strange layout.

Have a wonderful day!

Piglet's kids

Fresca and Domino snuggling at less than a week old. Domino got iodine on his head, that's what the yellow is. Nowadays yellow on his head is pee. He was an adorable kid and everyone loved him. Even all the other goats. Fresca is still very tightly bonded to her mother, they hang out together all the time.






This is Fresca today, she is bred to kid in March. She will be two in June. She was bred to Ray, who is one of Triscuit's kids. Tomorrow is going to feature Triscuit and her kids.











This is Domino as an adolescent, when he was still charming and pristine.










This is Domino last summer, he is bulkier now, and tinged with yellow. We tried to get a current picture of him, but the best we got wasn't good enough. He bugs Ray alot, I think about separating them, but they would have to split the room they have and it wouldn't be very big. Plus they also snuggle, so I don't know what is best. Advice would be welcome.

Ray is bigger and used to be the dominant one. Then we had a big rainstorm, and they spend a day and a half in their house. When they came out Domino was dominant and Ray had a little tear on his ear. (That healed with no problem)

Piglet's feet aren't very good, her hooves grow very fast and she has had a problem with laminitis that started after she kidded with these two, I have watched her kids very carefully and so far their feet are fine, and they have had no issues, but she was older when it started. We successfully treated her last year, and she was running and jumping and appeared cured, so I gradually stopped the meds I was giving her. She has relapsed, so we have started over. This time I know it isn't because her hooves haven't been trimmed well enough. So I am not inclined to breed her again, at this point. She is a terrific Aunty with everyone else's kids, and they love her.

Tomorrow is for Triscuit.

It is snowing here! Well, it has sort of turned to rain. But they said there would only be snow over 6000 feet, and we are around 4800 feet. So the snow was a surprise. We have gotten more precipitation this year than we usually get, hope it keeps up.

Have a wonderful day!

Jan

The Nubians

This is Tsu, my first goat. She is due to kid in March. She will be six in April. I got her when she was a kid, that's how I remember how long I've had goats. She wasn't bred until 2006, when she had two bucks in the dead of winter in the middle of the night. It was 15 degrees, and I didn't know what I was doing, Neither did she, it was horrible. Fortunately I have a neighbor who has experience and she helped us. The kids survived and did fine. The next year I didn't get her bred until very late, and her kids were born at the end of June. That was pretty bad too, there are just too many flies in the heat. I milked Tsu for 18 months, and dried her up to be bred this year. She is due to kid in late March. I will never breed for kidding in the cold or heat again, at least not on purpose.

She had two kinder does, Blacker and Browner. They looked so much alike that is how I told them apart until I got different colored collars on them. But part of the year Blacker looked Browner and Browner looked Blacker, they are really twins. Blacker went to live in Texas, where she is doing well. They still call her Blacker. This is the two of them when they were kids.





This is Tsu and Browner today. Browner is also bred to kid in March, they are both due on the same day. I'm not sure this was a great idea, but I came home from breeding Tsu and Browner was in season. I have to be sure to be there when they kid, so I can know for sure whose kid is whose. I don't think all the kids will look alike, but it's possible.




This is Piglet, I got her from my vet, she was his last nubian. She came with that name. He got rid of all his nubians in favor of Saanens and Oberhaslis. He has a big herd of dairy goats. She has the sweetest temperament of all my goats, and everyone loves her. In the summer her coat is bright red, and fades with white undercoat in the winter. I have a doe and a buck from her, and I will talk about them tomorrow.

Until tomorrow, have a wonderful day everyone!

Jan

This is my pygmy buck Silver. He has gone to live with the main pygmy goat person in my county, and he got bred to some little does this year, he thinks he is in heaven. I miss him, he is very sweet, but he is in a much better place for him, and I had no further breeding use for him. My best nubian, Tsu, got bred to a different pygmy buck this year. I don't have a picture of him, but he is quite the little darling. It was exciting to get connected with a pygmy breeder who shows and has lots of bucks. And I was really happy she wanted Silver. I think he is beautiful.


This is a picture of my son and grandson and me last August when they visited. They live in Vermont now. The little doe is Triscuit's kid Trude. Triscuit had triplets last year. This year she isn't bred.

So I think I have figured this out, and will post more, with more pictures, later.

Have a great day everyone!

Jan

Good Morning! It's February!

Hello everyone!

I am Jan Hodges and I am blogging this month about my Kinder goat adventure. I live in central New Mexico, about 30 miles south of Albuquerque.

I discovered kinder goats in the 90s, I moved out of the city to two acres in the country in 1993, and a neighbor had a goat for awhile. I liked her. Goats seemed to me to be by far the most interesting livestock. I was working, though, and it didn't take much research to figure out that I couldn't manage an 11 hour workday (including a pretty long commute) and also take decent care of goats. I'm pretty lazy, really.

In 2000 I rescued a great dane, Duke, who had terrible airborne allergies, which started a long hunt for relief for them. I tried shots, but he got tired of that and we couldn't do it without his cooperation. I tried raw honey, but that requires a huge dose, it was too much sugar, and expensive. I found local milk that wasn't processed much. There was a dairy that sold it, but they got bought out and that milk disappeared. So the only way to get milk for him was to have my own. But it was still too early. I got milk from my vet, who has a herd of dairy goats, for a few years. Duke's troubles with allergies completely disappeared for the rest of his life.

I got my two nubian doe kids a year before I retired, but milking them and working was going to be beyond me. I retired (finally, the first day I possibly could), bred one of them to my lovely Silver, and had my first kinders, both were male. I decided I didn't want the characteristics of the other doe in my kinder herd, and don't have her anymore.

In the spring of 2007 a friend went with me on a road trip to Missouri, where I got two doe kids from Sue Huston. They are my lovely Madame and Triscuit. I feel like I was very lucky to get them, and it was great to meet Sue.

I'm going to stop now and post this and try to figure out how to post pictures.

Have a wonderful rest of the day!

Jan