Monday, April 18, 2011

I made YOGURT AND BUTTER!

Needless to say, goat milking is working out GREAT!  Frustrations are over!  The mama goats know now to jump right up onto the stanchion and start eating!  They no longer kick us off.  They just had to be trained.  They stand perfectly still.  I can even milk them all by myself!  The real key was locking the babies up at night.  "Stealing" the morning milk worked so well, the udders were SO full and you barely had to touch them and the milk comes out in a thick stream. 
We are getting 8+ cups a day!  That's more of a guess actually.  But all I know is we have more than enough that's for sure!  And that's only from milking them once a day in the mornings.  After a week and a half, I skimmed all the cream off the top and got myself a whole cup of cream (I know--for you raw cow milk drinkers that's chump change--but goat's milk is naturally homogenized so there isn't that much cream on top, it stays suspended).  And I have a "butter" setting on my bread maker where it just whips the cream on high for 30 min--and that's all there was too it!  The butter seperated from the buttermilk and we got half a stick of butter from 1 cup of cream!  I was tempted to say, "Now let's only use 1 tbsp. a day and make it last."  But then I said to myself--Nah!  DH worked so hard to get all this milk, he deserves to do with it whatever he wants--and boy did he!  He had some yummy buttery waffles!  Oh and also neat--the butter is WHITE!  Cool!  Sorry no pictures--it was gone by the end of the day!
As for yogurt--also simple!  A good friend gave me a cup of yogurt and then I heated the milk to 105 to keep it raw, and added a few cups to the starter and oh so gently folded it in (the gentleness is absolute key to not having runny yogurt--don't even think of using a whisk or beating/stirring vigorously), and then gently folded the starter mixture into the pot, and then poured into a gallon jar, put in the dehydrator at 95 degrees and I had yogurt 18 hours later!  Then I let sit in fridge for 12 hours to set up further.  Turned out tangy and wonderful!  It's not going to be a solid like the store bought (they use pectin and things to make it that solid), but it had lots of nice clumps and poured easily from the jar.  
Then I made a quadruple batch of granola in my giant soap making pot....after I was done with the granola I hadn't yet put the pot away and I walked into the living room only to find....

1 comment:

Amelia said...

Oh I'm so glad that milking is working out. I had been thinking about you and wondering.

One of these days I will get brave enough to make yogurt with the raw cow's milk I get. My girls love yogurt so I would love to give them the good, healthy stuff.

As always, I love your updates on farm life!