Goat's Milk Ice Cream

With a surplus of fresh raw goats milk I am up for trying anything to use it up.  Last year I bought this ice cream maker on clearance at the end of summer.  I think maybe I paid $10?  Regardless, it was super cheap and works like a charm.  I brought it to the family I nanny for thinking it would be a fun activity to do with the kids.  So while the baby napped, the older kids and I made ice cream.  Every five minutes I would hear "Can I eat the ice cream yet?"  How do you explain having to wait a few hours for it to freeze to a three year old?  After nap time we sampled the not-quite-frozen ice cream and declared it good!  We will definitely do this again soon as summer is quickly approaching.  For this round we made old fashioned vanilla.  Maybe next time we will try making a different flavor.  I know you can buy flavor mixes at Target, but to me that defeats the purpose.  I want to use whole ingredients without any additives.  This way we know exactly what goes into our ice cream.  Last night I sat on the porch swing enjoying the fruits of our labor.  I topped the ice cream with strawberry jam I had made for my sister's wedding.  As the three year old says "delicious!"

Back in the Dairy Business

 Guess what???  Last week we were blessed to add goats back onto the farm.  Hubby and I always said that goats and chickens are our non-negotiables, meaning no matter what we would try to have them.  We had found an awesome family who was selling their herd.  We bought a doe and her buckling from them.  Another family had a milking doe for sale.  Our herd now consists of two beautiful ladies, and one tiny baby boy.  The mamas are milked every morning and evening.  When we first brought them home, they were so unsure of everything.  Now we have a routine.  In the mornings we let Mocha, the mama who didn't come with a baby out first.  She walks to the milk stand and jumps right up on it.  Once she is done, we open the door for her to return to the pen.  After that is Latte's turn.  Both Latte and her son, Java, come right out and hop up too.  This morning Mocha wasn't moving fast enough for Latte so Latte pushed her off the milk stand.  It was pretty comical.  Goats need to be milked at least once a day, preferably twice.  We milk around 5:15am and 6:00pm.  Typically milkings should be about 12 hours apart.  Milking is a huge commitment.  We can't decide to sleep in, or to not milk because it would mean that the poor goats are in pain.  Without kids (goat kids that is) nursing from their mamas, the udders remain full.  If they are not milked by a human (or a machine) they will be incredibly full and uncomfortable.  The goat mama would then realize that there is no point in producing milk and would dry up.  As long as the goat is milked daily she will continue producing milk whether or not she has a kid around.  Java (the buckling) nurses from only one side of Latte, so we milk from the other.  Between the two does we get almost a gallon of milk a day.  I will be trying  my hand at cheese, soap and anything else I can to use up the milk.  I made ice cream last week and yum oh yum! 

  These goats are so entertaining and I could sit for hours watching and playing with them.  I would think everyone would want a goat (just maybe not a milk goat).  I am sure the goats will dominate some posts here.  How can they not when they are so stinking cute?

New Kids on the Block

Today we adopted two kids! Not human kids, but baby goats. They are 10 weeks old and as adorable as can be. I drove almost 2 hours to pick them up. The trip was well worth it. I went for one dairy goat, and came home with two babies. When I got to the sellers house, he introduced me to all the goats. I let him know what we were looking for, and he showed me what was available. My choices were between pregnant goats, currently milking goats, or the young babies. As much as I would love to have a pregnant goat, I didn't feel that hubby and I are ready for that quite yet. A milking goat would be nice. I concluded that two female kids would be the best fit for us. We could raise them from the bottle. They will be used to us. Then when they are old enough, we can "rent a stud" and breed them. Thus by buying the babies, we can have, in the future, pregnant goats and milking goats. That, and we dont have "real" fencing up yet. So I paid the man, shook his hands, gathered up my babes, and drove home. We had to make a stop at the tractor supply store to get feed. I walked out of the store, and heard my new babies bleeting in the bed of the truck. This will be fun... Once we were home, goats, housing and feed in store, I introduced them to hubby. The family was complete. Hubby, me and two kids... well not exactly...It was hard to leave them to go to work, but a goat has to eat, and feed costs money, so off to work I go... Ill update pictures when I get them off the camera and on the computer. Enjoy!