Hey, When has THIS Ever Happened....?

TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY! WOW!

Way back on March 18th, we went to Kansas and brought home a pair of Kinder milking goats, two doelings, one buckling and a Billy. We have been milking the Does for about a month since then.

At first, the Milk Maid (Deb) would come out every morning and milk them. I can milk a cow, but never learned to tap a goat....Then we got a Maggidan's Milker to try.

While a good machine, it just did not want to work on our goats! They are great to deal with and refunded our money for the milker. I will still recommend the product, it just wasn't for us.

It was back to the Milk Maid in the mornings.....

Last week we ordered a different brand of milker that DOES work for us. The "Udderly EZ" milker. It was three times the price, but it sure makes a difference with Deb's bad hands and my arthritis in my hands. It works a little different then the other milker, so we managed to get it to operate on our goats.

Now the milk maid gets to sleep late again........

We decided to try and make some cheese today. We got all of the ingredients rounded up, recipes decided upon, and then figured out we need a bigger stock pot....
Oh well, we made do with what we had.

This first time we made Mozzarella Cheese and then Ricotta cheese with the whey. It is not bad for our first try, the mozzarella is a little hard, but it is very edible. I can't wait until we graduate to Colby or Cheddar. It will come with practice.

I can remember mom making cheese when I was about 9 or 10. I recall it having to age FOREVER, but it was worth the wait in the end. She even made homemade cottage cheese that was excellent. One of these days we will have to try THAT, too.

I also made some Tapioca Pudding today, with a recipe that came from mom. Since Deb doesn't like it - I GET IT ALL!

It was actually kinda fun, doing it together. Now we just need to get GOOD at it.