Blogging Interrupted

Dottie Belle and Jazzman

I didn't exactly decide not to blog from the middle of July until January; it just fell by the wayside.  The last blog I wrote was about my Nigerian Dwarf goat, Dottie Belle, giving birth to Jazzman.  





What then ensued was a change in hobbies.  

Feta Cheese sits and drains for 48 hours

I became completely absorbed in learning to milk the goat and then make butter, cheese and yogurt. 

Plain strong Feta cut into cubes.

 I actually had made butter from cow's milk when I was a child. I used the electric mixer. I found that to still be be best way to make butter.  
I was worried that because goat milk is naturally more homogenized, that I wouldn't be able to separate the cream. I looked into buying a cream separator, but wow they are expensive for something as small as my operation. But by letting goat's milk sit in a jar in the refrigerator for a couple of days, I was able to skim off enough cream.  Sometimes I put it in a bowl, so there would be a larger surface.  But the bowl took up more space. I remember when I started dating my first husband, one day he opened my parents' refrigerator and all that was in there was a huge bowl of milk.  He was a city kid and totally did not know what was going on.  But at our house out in the country, in you wanted to eat, you had to go pick it out of the garden or kill it.  Of course we had canned vegetables and fruits and meat in the deep freeze. But our refrigerator was mostly just for milk and eggs.

Anyway, my hobbies of sewing and blogging mostly ceased while Dottie Belle was in milk.  I'll go back and blog about some of the fun and hopefully interesting things that happened during those months. I wish I had documented things along the way, but now all I can do is say, " I'll do better next time."