I am getting way more goat milk than we can use so I’m trying to find creative ways to use it up. Of course Basil is drinking it. I am feeding him approximately 22 ounces three to four times a day, but that hardly puts a dent in the milk the goats are producing. I made four quarts of yogurt yesterday, but it didn’t come out all that well so I gave it to the dogs. I think the dogs are getting sick of goat milk. Of course I make lots and lots of cheese, but the refrigerator is starting to get full of cheese. I bought two graham cracker crumb crusts yesterday (which was kind of stupid as I should have made my own from scratch, but I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time) and plan to make some cheesecake from goat cheese. That should be good and reasonably healthy since I won’t use quite as much sugar as called for in the recipe and will use unrefined sugar. I made a batch of pineapple and banana ice cream yesterday which was very good. Maybe I’ll start taking baths in it.
I admit I probably don’t need four goats, but one of them could go dry or some other tragedy could happen and I’d be down to three which really isn’t quite as much. Rain is still giving me a hard time drying off. Her udder was so full, I felt bad for her and milked her on Saturday. She looks better if I milk her than if I don’t. She seems to eat better if she’s getting time on the milk stand. This goat lives to milk.
Unless we have to, we will not be doing any more bottle babies. I don’t know how people with a lot of dairy goats deal with feeding bottle babies. It is extremely time consuming. I’d much rather the baby were able to drink when he was hungry, not when I decide it’s time for him to be fed. It is a very unnatural practice. Wally now feels the same way. No more talk about bottle feeding a calf from him.
We finished fencing in the agility field yesterday and it looks really nice. We still need to work on the fence behind the field to make sure the goats or sheep cannot come through. There are four strands of barbed wire up on one corner and I thought that would keep the goats out. Wrong. They climbed right through and all I could see was their udders getting torn up. We fixed that area temporarily with some cattle panels. We’ll run field fence on the back side over the next couple of weeks.
It rained off and on all weekend long and it feels very tropical right now. It’s quite uncomfortable. In a few minutes I’ll start the ATV and take the dogs for a run and check the sheep and Rose. I’d like to be able to move the sheep in the next day or so, but I don’t think the weather is going to cooperate.
I made a wonderful meal last night. I had originally planned to marinate lamb steaks and put them on the grill, but we were so caught up in fencing, that I didn’t get in to get the marinade done. While shopping that morning I found split turkey breasts for $.99/pound. I bought all of them. Luckily I had the foresight to leave one in the refrigerator. I cut the meat off the bones and placed it in an oven proof frying pan. I added some sliced new potatoes, onion, garlic (lots), fresh chopped thyme, rosemary and sage, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I cooked at at 400 degrees for about an hour, turning it half way through cooking. It was wonderful! It was a bit too warm to have the oven on 400 degrees for an hour, but the meal was worth it.
I bought a bunch of morning glory seeds and plan to plant them along the agility field fence. If all goes well, I’ll start to plant perennial wildflowers along the fence in an effort to eliminate the need to keep the fence clear of weeds. I’ll do the same around my garden fence. I did a stupid thing a few weeks ago: I sprayed herbicide along the fence line of my gardens and I mixed it a bit too strong. When I planted my cucumber plants along the fence, they promptly died. I hate to think of the environmental damage I did by spraying the herbicide. I won’t do it again.
Until later …