another

I milk two quarts of milk a day from my goat. I can get more if I start milking her twice. Oprah is way to big for nursing on her momma, but she is still stealing suckles. Oprah is a healthy girl.

We have switched completely from cow's milk to goat's milk. Today I took my surplus of goats milk and made a big batch of cheese. I didn't think to pick up the camera until I was watching the whey drain from the curds. All you missed was me warming up the milk in a pot and then adding lemon to curdle the milk. No recipe. I let it sit and cool a little before I poured it in the strainer, lined with linen, to catch the curdles and drain the liquid (whey.)

See why I thought it was pretty?
Then I added salt. About this much:

Then I picked some fresh herbs, parsley, basil, oregano, and a pinch of thyme. I chopped them up into a fragrant burst of fresh from the earth flavors. I added a sprinkle of garlic powder, black pepper and chunks of roasted red peppers. Yum. I wish I could have smell-a-blog, you would love this part of my blog. Later on in this blog, not so much.
Then I used some hay baling twine and hung it from my wood stove pipe. Tomorrow, cheese will be served. That pretty much ended my domestic chores for the day.


After the cheese making, I went out and cleaned the Rabbitry. It always needs cleaned up. Rabbits never stop pooping. Plus, I have three younger chickens up there. Which in turn attracted my other younger chickens. Funny how they naturally flock. Now I have six chickens in the rabbitry with some others who come and go.

As I was cleaning, Rusty came up and helped, and all of a sudden he said, "Did you see this big snake skin up here?" A shiver ran down my spine. "No I did not see that snake skin", I answered, sizing up how long it was. It was long. It went from my chest to my foot, and the skin had a loop in it. So I am guessing to my neck. I am 5'6".

Look at it's head, face, eyes, and mouth. So the snake is bigger, now right? Rusty says it's a black snake, maybe a rat snake or a black racer. He says it's not big enough to eat my rabbits and that it is there probably keeping the mice population in control. I have never seen a mouse in the barn. Maybe that is why. Thank you snake?

Hi I am a snake, what are you?

After all of that excitement, We decided to go pick up a little package that we paid for last weekend. You know the way...


Except we weren't going to town, we were heading down into the valley and over a hill. Past some farms...

Until we came to this farm.

I so need a lamb. Look at that face. I need to paint sheep.

Pig Pile!
Yes, today is the day we picked up our piglet. Everybody was excited when we got him home. Especially the piglet. SQUEAL! He had been free roaming with his siblings and big Mamma, cousins and Auntie Sows. So he really didn't have a whole lot of human interaction. Until today.

Tonka wants to see who is making all the noise, and that smell... somebody dropped a stinker.

Well, hi there Mr. Piggie.

Welcome to Bluestone River Farm. You don't know it yet, but I give the best piggy back scratches, and I will talk to you and feed you nice goats milk with your feed, when you are bigger you can go root and hunt for acorns. The baby goats will like having you around. When you get big, they will try to stand on you. Oh and watch out for that donkey... and your tail.


You are cute as a button. I think we might go back and get one of your sisters.

Yes, so this little guy is Sling Blade's second cousin, or something like that. He is nestled into the barn on his hay bed right now, with his new roommates, the chickens, ducks and goats. I was hoping to get a nice sleepy time shot of everybody, they looked so cute an snuggled in, but it is my sleepy time. However, tomorrow, I will be taking the series of how not to photograph your pig.

Nite all,
~crow