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The First Milking

October 21, 2012

Welp, it’s official…we have decided to move forward with the goat milking gig and yesterday afternoon was our first shot at it!

The agreement is that we will milk twice a week (on Saturdays and Wednesdays) with the understanding that 1) we will give two weeks notice if we (or she) will be out of town to ensure milking is covered and 2) if an emergency occurs on either side, the other will jump in to cover the milking.

We brought some old, wrinkled apples and a few wrinkled tomatoes to feed them in the hopes of winning them over a bit and they were very happy to have the treats (we are complete strangers, after all)!

It took an hour from start to finish (I’m sure as we get better/quicker, the process will go much smoother) and included a bit of attitude from Baby (the milker), but nothing too terrible.  She figured out it was easier to relax than to battle 😉

Once we were all done, we came home to strain the milk and see how much we actually wound up with!  

We don’t have any official goat milking tools yet except for a single stainless steal bucket, so we strained the milk using a metal strainer along with several layers of coffee filters and some cheesecloth.  It might not have been pretty, but the layers worked perfectly to remove all the random hairs and particles that came home with the milk!

All in all, this was a great first experience!  We got almost 5 quarts of fresh, delicious milk in trade for about an hour and 20 minutes of our time (total, drive time included) which seems like a heck of a deal to me!!!  Now we just have to learn how to make some yummy yogurt and a little cheese 😉

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23 Comments on “The First Milking”

  1. Pingback: The Joys of Bartering - Ever Growing Farm | Ever Growing Farm

  2. Congratulations!! I remember my first goat milking – it was quite a rodeo. 🙂 There is nothing better, in my opinion, than homegrown goat milk. Enjoy!

  3. Wow, how cool! Chi and I dream of a time when we will have our own place with enough space to keep a goat and a few more critters, and you seem to have found an ideal solution. (Although our landlord somewhat astonishingly gave us permission to get some “urban chickens”, I am sure he’ll draw the line at a goat!)

    If our schedule(s) were less volatile, I’d like to try what you are doing, since when I saw the post attached below from one of my favorite food bloggers awhile ago (I’m sure you’ll enjoy this too!), I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some “fresh from the goat” milk to try whipping up a batch of home made chevre (recipe contained in attached post) and panir. Enjoy!

    http://www.tartedujour.com/journal/2011/4/11/homemade-chevre-fresh-from-the-farm.html

    P.S. I have no idea why the header says “anonymous” when I comment from my WP account! This is Brenda K here.

    1. Hmmm…that’s interesting…somehow in the process of going from “preview” to “publish”, my account name appears :/

    2. It’s such a balancing act, isn’t it? All the time!!! Well, if you have your landlords blessings, it might be worth looking into a couple of chickens, if you’re really thinking about it! Once you get them all set up, it’s pretty simple…especially with the warmer temps you all have out there 🙂

      Thanks for the link! Not only am I excited about that recipe (oh my!!!), but also about exploring this beautiful new-to-me blog!

    1. Ha! Right?! I wish we could keep goats here, but there is no room for them (believe me, I’ve tried to twist it around in my head plenty of times)! This trade serves us both very well 🙂

  7. I agree, that is exciting! Being able to practice milking and have some milk to experiment with! All good practice.

  10. Lovely goats! Hello, by the way, I’ve been reading this blog for a while, and am finally moved to comment by the word “yogurt”, because I invented possibly the least labour-intensive yoghourt recipe in the universe, and although it’s like nothing I’ve seen recommended, it’s been working for us for about a year with no ill effects. Unfortunately, to get it going, you’ll need to buy a small container of goat’s milk yoghourt with live cultures in it. Then you sterilise a jar (about a litre big – sorry, I’m Australian – what’s a litre in Americanian – approx a quart?), add around three big tablespoons of the yoghourt to the jar, fill the rest up with milk, leaving a couple of centimetres at the top, and screw down the lid. We then half-fill a large thermos with very hot (almost boiling water), put the jar inside the thermos, close the thermos up, and leave somewhere for 6-8 hours. Voila! Yoghourt! When you want to make more in a week’s time, you just take the three tablespoons of yoghourt starter from your last batch. It doesn’t seem to matter, for yoghourt making purposes, whether the milk is pre-pasteurised or not. Obviously pasteurisation reduces the risk of there being unwanted cultures in the milk, but it also reduces the likelihood of getting some pretty healthsome raw milk bacteria action.

    1. Well, hello there Alexis! First, thank you so much for following along!!! Second, thank you for sharing your yogurt process! It sounds absolutely fabulous and we will *definitely* be trying it out! What a gift 🙂

    2. Hope it works for you! My sidekick makes cheese (including goats’ milk chevre and fetta), and it’s always such a palaver making sure the temperature is just so and the weather is just right and the stars are aligned the right way. Yoghourt, on the other hand, is slap-dash and easy-peasy. Enjoy the goats! and thanks for the great blogging 🙂

    3. Thanks for your kind words, Alexis! I’m with you…I’d much rather have something be easy-peasy than worrying about the stars lining up 😉 Thank you again for your tips and ideas!

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