Starting A New.....

Hello to all, I want to start a new and start posting here rather than on facebook. You know when you get a really icky taste in your mouth and its totally awful???? I just had the experiance with facebook and I think the blog is much more fun and safer.
I am heading out to the processing plant to hang some chevre today. I have to first clean my cheese cloth and throw them in the washing machine... then hang the cheese. I didn't get done making it till about 11:30 pm last night so I have no big hurry to get it hung this morning.
I cleaned the bulk tank yesterday too. I have made 3 batches of cheese this week. 2 chevre and one feta.
Speaking of feta I need to drain it and resalt it today and then put it into the buckets into the cooler for 5 days.
I have a bunch of packaging to do today too. And then I will label and and weigh it tonight.
We are in the Olympia Farmers Market 4 days this year and we will sell all the way until Dec. 24.
We are also up at Pikes Place too, only on Fridays. Tomorrow David is just going to Seattle to deliver cheese and then come home. We are also at the Tacoma Proctor Market and the Steilicoom Market. We have picked up a bunch of resturants this season too.
We are milking about 40 does and have about 89 goats this year. We had a really bad winter sort or Spring. We bought about 20 goats from Spokane area and lost all but 5 from something that is passed like HIV from one goat to another and it effects the birthing - aborted babies and then the doe dies... Nasty stuff. So we are way down in goats... but it was Gods way to help take our herd down to a number that I can manage by myself - mostly.
Both of our last of 9 daugthers graduated this June, one stayed home to help with the farm the other flew off to Texas to go to school and help her sister by babysitting thier 1 year old, my grandson.
I am planning on going to Africa in January to help get the ball rolling on a dairy and processing plant in Rwanda. it should be fun and I already know lots of work. Don't know the time frame yet of how long I will be over there.
Well I think that is enough up date for now.... plenty more to add later.

New Cheese, or old one

This last week we worked well as a family. The dairy ran smoothly and the cheese curded up firmly. I made a 30 gallon batch of my Grande Rosa and one round of pepper cheese. We took it to the markekt and people are really liking it. This cheese is pretty cool, its got the texture of a mozzarella and it melts like that, but it has a little attitude. I made up the recipe or rather stopped a recipe where I thought it would make an interesting cheese. And actually if I was totally honest - it was a mistake that turned into a great cheese. I made this cheese last year and it did very well too. I just hadn't tried it since the cave was wash away in the December flood in Lewis county. But remembering it wasn't an actual aged cheese I thought I'd give it a try. The trick is to package it ALL up, where before we put it in the cave and packaged as we went. We have three refrigerates going with cheese stuff in them, so we have the room for all that cheese to be stored once packaged.
Our markets were all pretty good this week. The Longview markekt wasn't happening this weekend due to the Cowlitz Fair running. And they use the parking lot for the fairgrounds for the market. Could of been Messy.
Our two daughters worked at the Airshow in Centrailia this weekend which ment MOM had to round up the goats and milk them. Lucky for me they got home with still two loads to milk and I was relieved of my milking duty to go in the house and start dinner.
I painted the milk parlor this week and then drew a goat body on the wall above our milking stantions, well I finished lableing all the parts on the goat. And if I say so myself it looks pretty good. It will give visiters a chance to see the parts of the goat and be able to follow along as we discribe how we milk the goats. It will help our 4-H club know the parts as they can touch and see the parts of the goats while they are milking.
Our house has been hoping making cheese, leveling the processing plant again, painting and even fencing. It seems on the farm our work is never done, but we can sit around in the evening and watch the sun set.

July 20, 2008

We got up at 7am after being at market yesterday it seemed we needed alittle more sleep today. Yesterday we did well at both our markets. We were down about $200 from last weekend. But there are so many activites going on that people try and make it to the Sat. markets as much as possible. From last year our numbers slowly went down from the first market, so its to be expected. The weather yesterday was really nice, a little wind. We left yeaterday at 7am in the morning and we both arrived home around 5pm. I stopped off and picked up one of our foster sons. We unpacked the cheese and counted it. We also unloaded both vehicals and then did chores. Doing Farmers Markets is so nice.... they are short in hours and intense while there.
Today I will be painting more in the milk room and finishing the parts lables on the goat in the milking room. The parlor looks so clean and it feels that way too. Milking went without incident and so did the chores. Ali is gone for a week so Danyel is milking for me this week. I am going to freeze the last of the chevre I made on Monday, there is only about 13 pounds left. I have washing equipment in the processing plant, which we call the Green House - due to its outside color. And my confusing the two houses when referring to them.