July 20, 2008

Today was a pretty laid back day. We started chores at 7am. Just to give you a clue of what that means I'll detail the chores: It starts with cleaning and reading the parlor. This takes about 1/2 hour to complete. One wash with cold water, second wash with lye and third wash with acid. Then hook up all the machinery and get warm soap water, to wash teats, and rags. Water all the buckets/ clean them if there is green in them and empty them and then fill with fresh water - about 11 buckets. Feed the goats - There are the bucks the meat kids, doe kids, sick goats- this takes about 20 pounds of feed. Then round the goats up that are to be milked. That means to shut gates and separate the milkers from the non milkers and load them into a big pen that leads to the milk parlor (65 goats). Then start milking, which takes about 10 min. a load--- there are eight goats a load and four milking apparatus - so we can actually milk four goats at a time then switch and milk the last four. These goats are eating their breakfast while they are milked. We do this twice aday. Today was normal chores.
I then went out to the Green House -processing plant- and washed all the equipment and wrote data on the eraser board of the farmers market sales.
I am ready to make cheese and maybe some yogurt tomorrow. Tonight I will make some lemon chevre for the market tomorrow in Tacoma.