Compost News

As you all probably know by now I am an avid composter. I have several sources that bring their "waste" to my farm so that I can compost on a larger scale than I would otherwise be able. Well, I just read an article in Mother Earth News that every gardener needs to know. Basically some of the herbicides that are on the market are surviving through the composting process and then killing the gardens that the compost is used on. It is a good article and a definite need to know for those of us trying to raise our food (or even pretty flower gardens for that matter). Happy Composting!

Summer Education

I realized how neglected my sidebar for our homeschool activities had become. So I have updated it with our homeschooling activities for this summer. My little one will just continue learning while she plays. Since she is out in the barn with me every morning while I milk maybe she can learn to milk. I am not sure if she has the hand strength, but we will see. Sure would be nice to have a second pair of hands one day to help with the milking. Especially with more does freshening. As far as my oldest goes she will be kept busy as well. She is not so much a farm girl and while she does like to be outside and occasionally play outside, she is more of an inside kinda girl. I simply cannot stand to hear children say, "I'm Bored" during the summer. There are also a few things like math that take her a little longer than some so we work on those throughout the year. Science projects will be done all throughout the summer. I have found this is a great way to really buckle down into science and we have more time to devote to large projects that require hours of work and research to complete. It also makes science a lot more fun for a girl that isn't really into science. We will begin much more serious studies of literature during the summer so there will be extensive reading assignments along with creative writing assignments and daily journal assignments associated with each thing that we read. She will be reading some classics along with a collection of short stories.Along with the literature we will begin a new grammar series that I think is much more comprehensive than the one we have been using. It uses a lot more application of the concepts and I think will work better for us. It is a much larger book with much more involved so we will start it this summer. She has just started learning to compose music with her piano instructor so I imagine lots of music will be written here this summer. Guitar lessons have been added to the mix so we will be hearing guitar music floating through the house as well. Along with all of that we will have many hours of playtime and home education during the rest of the day. That should keep her pretty busy, so that I don't have to hear those words that every parent hates to hear during the summer. Blessings from the farm, Kat

Homemade Cottage Cheese

I found a really good recipe for homemade cottage cheese, so I thought I would share.

Ingredients:
1 quart of milk
2tbls. buttermilk
1/8 tsp. salt

Put the milk in a mason jar and add the buttermilk. Cover with cheesecloth and allow to sit overnight or until the milk has clabbered. Heat this clabbered milk in a pot on low heat until the curds and whey separate. Pour through a cheesecloth lined strainer and allow to drain. If the cottage cheese is dryer than you like when finished then pour a bit of the whey back in and stir. You can stir the salt in once it is drained. I got about a cup of cottage cheese with this recipe, so I decided I would double it from now on. 1 cup just doesn't go very far in our house. One thing that I didn't like about this cottage cheese is that the curds were not very big. However, the taste is delicious and maybe if I let the curds cook a little longer that might change their size. I don't really know, since I am such a newbie at this.

Thanks to Highland View Pantry for this great easy recipe!

How I Make Butter from Goat Millk

I had a reader ask on another post about how I make butter from my goat milk. It is an easy process although a bit tedious since I don't have any of the fancy equipment like cream separators. Each day I collect the cream off the previous day's milk. I then place this into a container (quart size) that I keep in the freezer for cream collection. When the container is full, I then take it out and let it thaw out. Then I divide it between 2 quart mason jars. Put the lids on and shake, shake, shake. This is a good time to dance around the house with your 3 year old, they love it and you are still working. The cream will start to clump together and then you will have a large ball of butter in the jar. Next, poor the mixture through a strainer lined with clean muslin. You can collect the liquid to feed to the chickens if you like or use in bread recipes. Next I place the butter in a bowl and start washing it with ice water or cold water from the fridge. regular tapwater melts the butter. just keep washing the butter ans squishing it around until the water runs off clear. So the process is wash, pour off and wash again, until the water poured off is clear. Then salt the butter or not depending on taste and place in clean container. I keep mine on the counter as it doesn't last long around here and gets hard in the fridge. The key thing to making this butter is to wash it really well. If you don't get all the leftover milk out of the butter it will sour. It also doesn't make much. I suppose I get about a 1/4 pound give or take from doing this. I think some of it also depends on what kind of goats you have. My nubians give more cream than my nubian/saanen, so that may be why folks who own other breeds simply can't get butter this way. Nubians and Nigerian dwarfs have the highest butterfat content in the dairy goat world. That is the reason that I chose my nubies. Now it will be interesting to see what my Boer/Nubian gives in cream since boers supposedly have very high fat in their milk.So if you have trouble getting any cream from your milk after it has stood in the fridge for 24 hours or so, it may be the breed of goat that you have and the fact that they simply don't have a high cream content. Good luck in your buttermaking!

Monsanto owned seed companies

Kelle over at The Never Done Farm has a great comprehensive list of seed companies owned by Monsanto. I agree with her that we homesteaders must make a stand against their greed. It is up to us to save heirloom seeds for future generations and if we don't make the stand now, by making sure that we do not purchase Monsanto seeds, then they will do whatever it takes to destroy our heirlooms. So please check out her list of Monsanto owned seed companies

Blessings from the farm!

Chevre

The term chevre simply means "goat cheese" in french. However, usually when folks are talking cheese and refer to chevre they are talking about a soft molded cheese that is very creamy in texture, like cream cheese or neufchatel cheese. Most recipes I find regarding chevre are pretty much the same so here is one that I have tried and liked a lot. Blessings.

Fias Co Farm's Chevre

1/2 gallon fresh goat milk
1/8 tsp. mesophilic DVI Culture "MM"* or 1 oz. mesophilic culture (from a mother culture)**
liquid rennett

Note**I used my cultured buttermilk as my mesophilic culture so I used the 1 oz. measurement

In a stainless steel pot, warm the milk to 72°. Actually, when I make this cheese, I just pour the milk I just strained from the morning's milking into the pot and don't worry about the temp. I find this works fine for me.

Add the culture and stir well. Now you need to add 1/5 of a drop of rennet. I know you're saying to yourself, how the heck do I do that. Well it's easy. Measure out 5 Tablespoons of water into a small cup. Add to the water 1 drop of liquid rennet and stir well. Now measure out 1 Tablespoon of the rennet dilution (this one Tablespoon contains 1/5 of a drop of rennet) and add it to the milk. Stir well.

Cover the milk and place the pot somewhere that it can sit undisturbed and will stay about 72° for about 18 hours (sometimes I let it go 24 hours). What I do is place the pot in the cold oven until the next day. Try to remember that the milk is in the oven and don't plan on doing any baking that day.

When the milk has coagulated (it will look like thick yogurt) you are ready to drain the curds or mold the cheese.

Pour off any whey that has separated from the curd. Place your molds on a rack over a large baking pan. A lot of whey will drain from your cheese, and you will need a large pan to catch it. Carefully ladle the curds into the molds.

If you want to make your cheese fancy at this point, you can add seasoning to the curds as you ladle them into the molds. You could put in a couple scoops of curd in the mold and then sprinkle on some herbs, freshly ground pepper or garlic. Then ladle in the rest of the curds. You don't need to worry about salting anything at this point.

Let the curds drain for two days. I do this at room temperature. You could drain the cheese in the fridge if you have room (I never do). I cover the molds to keep out any unwanted "nasties."

After the cheese has drained you can carefully unmold them into your hand. Sprinkle all the sides of the cheese with a little Kosher salt and wrap them in plastic wrap. The cheese will keep for about 2 weeks in the fridge.

(Recipe is courtesy of Fias Co Farm)

If you choose to drain this cheese in a bag, which you can do, then it would be called fromage blanc and not chevre. You would drain bag style for 6-8 hours.

This cheese is supposed to freeze well and so can be kept in supply even when milk is short. I so far have not frozen any, but I will do so soon as our milk supply is increasing.

Hope you all enjoy and thanks to Fias Co for a great easy to follow recipe!

I am writing a book

I have decide to write a book about our homesteading journey. This will not be a "how to" per se although I do expect that the reader will be able to glean lots of how to information from it. This instead will be the story of our journey from being totally dependent on a system to being more dependent on God and what the land can provide (self-sufficient so to speak). I hope this book will be an inspiration to anyone in any stage of this journey; from those just thinking about it to those already well on their way. Anyway, I am excited about sharing our journey with anyone willing to read it. I hope to be able to offer it as an ebook this fall. We will see what the summer brings! Blessings from the farm, Kat

Vinegar Cheese

This is a great all around cheese to make and super simple for the beginner cheese maker. I know since I am a beginner cheese maker myself. I had no problems with this recipe and used it like ricotta in manicotta. I have also used it seasoned with herbs to top crackers for snacks. Awesome cheese!

How to:
Vinegar Cheese
Bring FRESH milk to about 185 degrees over medium heat in stainless steel pot, stirring constantly. Stir while slowly pouring 1/4 or up to 1/2 cup white vinegar per gallon of milk. Remove from heat. The milk will begin to separate into fine curds and whey.
I usually put my pot onto a rack and cover the pot with a splatter screen. Allow to cool until it's safe to pour. Pour into a fine cheesecloth (cotton handkerchief or muslin) lined stainless steel colander. Tie the ends and hang to allow to drain for 30 minutes to two hours. The longer you allow to strain the drier and more crumbly the cheese. Once done draining turn cheese into a mixing bowl. Add 1 tsp Mrs. Dash Italian Medley or Mrs. Dash Garlic seasoning, 1 tsp minced garlic and 1 tsp salt per gallon of milk used. We LOVE this cheese on crackers or salads, etc. Keeps one week refrigerated, or can be frozen in smaller portions for later.

Thanks to Sondra at Dairy Goat Info for this recipe, it is truly a gem!

Edited to add that this cheese is also known as Queso Blanco (white cheese)

Let's talk Cultures

Since I thought I would post some of my favorite cheese recipes, I thought we should talk about cultures. Many cheese recipes call for a culture, either a mesophilic or a thermophilic culture. There are quite a few places online that sell these cultures. I got to thinking though that at some point in past history people didn't have access to storebought type cultures...so how did they make cheese. Every culture throughout history has used cheese making as a way of preserving milk so how did they do it without grocery stores or specialty cheese making shops online. I started researching and what I found was that cultured buttermillk was a mesophilic culture and this is easy to culture and make without buying anything extra. Yogurt is a thermophilic culture and while I make my yogurt with a starter there must be a way to do this also. So, I have decided to use these cultures and get some cheese making experience under my belt before I spend money on cultures that wind up in mistakes that are fed to the chickens. Here are the directions for making your own cultured buttermilk and yogurt.

Cultured Buttermilk
Take one cup of fresh raw milk and cover with muslin. Then let it sit on the counter for about 3 days. Take 1/4c of this culture and place in a pint jar, then add 1 cup to the jar. Shake a bit to mix then let it sit on the counter covered with muslin again for a couple of days or until the milk is clabbered. Keep repeating this process until the milk clabbers within 24 hours. It should be thick and sour tasting, not bitter. It it has any off smells or taste then toss it and start over. Once you reach the point where the milk dependably clabbers within 24 hours, then add 6 oz. to a quart jar, fill the rest of the way with fresh milk, let sit 24 hours and then refrigerate. Now you have cultured buttermilk to use for a mesophilic culture.

Crockpot Yogurt
I love this method of making yogurt because it simply is no muss no fuss. It is simple and pretty much self making. I have read that some people have trouble with this but mine turns out really well each and every time. Here is what I do.
Take half a gallon of milk and place in crockpot on low for 3 hours. Then I remove a couple cups and mix in 3/4 of a cup of live active culture plain yogurt from the store. If you just bought the 1 cup container then you can use the whole thing, your yogurt will just be a little thicker. Dump this mix back in the crockpot and stir it into the rest of the milk. Then wrap the crockpot in a couple of towels and let it sit for about 8 hours. You don't have to be exact with this time. I have let it sit for as long as 12 hours with no problems. Then you simple pour your yogurt into jars and refrigerate. Now you have your thermophilic culture for cheese.

Blessings from the farm, Kat

What I have been up to lately

Well, spring and summer are in full swing. The goats are kidding, I have tons of milk to do something with and the garden needs constant attention. I am rebuilding my compost piles since I used every single bit in the garden and the goat pasture. I vow to build them bigger this year! To help with that vow, I am collecting grass clippings from town each week. This week I gathered 4 large bags (all I could fit into my car). Add the grass, leaves, barn cleanings, garden scraps and weeds and they are growing quite well. The garden is doing as well as can be expected. It has been a really dry spring so things are growing slowly. Last year we had plenty of spring rain and it seemed as if the seedlings were popping up as soon as they were put in the ground almost. This year, I plant and water for days. Then just when I am thinking that those seeds were not very good ones and I need to replant...shy little plants start to make their way out of the soil. So things are slow, but so far everything is looking good. Despite the heat our romaine and red leaf lettuce are doing great. No sign of the heat starting to bother them at all. The swiss chard is doing well also. With those three things we are having some delicious salads. I think I am going to use some swiss chard in the manicotti for dinner(lunch) today since my spinach burned up before it even did anything. Kind of a mock manicotti florentine. Speaking of manicotti...Since we have an abundance of milk these days I have started making cheese. My first cheese was ricotta and then I made buttermilk cheese. I am going to start making hard cheeses soon. Soooooo, our little goat herd is definitely earning their keep. We get milk, butter, ice cream, yogurt, meat and now cheese from them. It sure does cost less to feed the whole herd of goats than to buy those things in the amounts that we use them. I will get to posting some of the cheese recipes and other dairy recipes that we have found that we liked. Well, I suppose I had better get to work around here. With the days getting hotter, my mornings start earlier so that I don't have to do much in the heat of the day. We still have not turned on our AC this year and are still planning to try and hold off until July 1. We will see how the weather goes. Blessings from the farm, Kat