Last week we took a field trip to Kalona, Iowa, to pick up supplements for the goats. I thought that pasturing the goats and supplementing with grain and hay during the colder months would fulfill all their nutritional needs, but it turns out that this is not the case. Since goat milk has a high mineral content, higher than cow milk, the goats need mineral supplementation if their diet is not rich enough in certain elements. To fulfill these needs Christine gives the goats blocks of salt to lick, as well as powdered seaweed added to their grain rations. The seaweed and salt have to be mined and imported from coastal areas, so this practice is not sustainable. I would love to research ways to provide all the necessary “extras” with locally grown produce, herbs, and wild plants.
In addition to mineral supplementation, Christine makes sure her herd is free of parasites by giving them a combination of diatomaceous earth and an herbal de-wormer. The diatomaceous earth is benign for the goats, but deadly to parasites anywhere in the digestive tract. The herbal de-wormer, which includes garlic and wormwood, adds an extra punch, as well as extra flavor to the grain. The goats wind up having garlic seaweed breath, but they don’t seem to mind and they sure are healthy!

I’ve been neglecting to write about my cheese making experiences, because I’m so into the activity itself it’s hard to break away and report on it. This is one of those things I just want to dive into and keep improving for life!
The book I’m learning from is Christine’s cheese making bible: Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Homemade Cheeses by Ricki Carroll. Although the recipes intimidated me at first, the clear writing style and Christine’s step by step directions made the process pretty smooth. I’ll be sure to put this on the webstore page, since I need to buy a copy for myself.
The overall lesson I’ve learned is that the basic steps of cheese making are the same for every cheese: warming the milk, mixing in starters and rennet, letting set, cutting, cooking, and draining the curds, placing in a mold, followed by pressing and aging for hard cheeses. Soft cheeses are less labor intensive because they do not need the final preservative methods the hard cheeses require.
The times, temperatures, and cultures for all these steps can be adjusted to produce vastly different textures, flavors, and aromas in the resulting cheese. This is similar to other artisan food methods like bread making and brewing; the basic ingredients and processes are the same, while the timing and temperature are variable. In this way the same milk and cultures can be used to create a smooth, tangy Gouda, a semisoft, sharp Monterey Jack, and many other surprising, one of a kind variations.
Outside of an industrial setting, it is almost impossible to exaclty replicate the same cheese time after time; there will always be slight differences from batch to batch. The hint of unpredictability involved in making artisan foods comes from all the variables that contribute to both process and result. Temperature, humidity, handling, ingredients, even the mood of the cheese maker all combine to create the flavor of each creation. You can take it even further and realize that the goats who make the milk have their own huge contribution to the outcome. What did the goats eat, how was their health, were they happy? A happy goat makes happy milk, which makes for the best cheese you’ve ever tasted in your life!

Tags: artisan cheese, raw cheese, unpasteurized cheese

For the last several months I've been learning to milk goats and cows. One evening a week my daughter and I drive a few miles into the country to visit my friend's farm, where she operates a raw milk dairy. Although selling unpasteurized dairy products is illegal in the state of Iowa, her operation is legal because customers buy a share of the cows or goats, instead of the actual milk. As part owers of the animals, they are entitled to a share of the milk, butter, clabber, and cheese produced.

During this two week period, I’m doing an internship officially titled “artisan dairy apprenticeship”. It involves the milking I’ve been doing for the past several months, but with lessons in cheese making, animal care, barn chores, and media about the bacterial processes, culture, and nutrition of raw milk dairy. Can I just say, I love internships! Being outside, especially in the spring, rather than stuffed into some boring classroom is just the best way to learn.

The first part of the new things I’m learning is how to care for the goats hooves. Goats have cloven hoofs that grow slowly, but continuously. If they are living in a climate with sandy or rocky soil, as well as walking a lot to move from pasture to pasture, these get worn down. On Christine’s farm, the goats graze in pasture, but don’t walk very far, so their hooves need to be trimmed several times a year. Trimming a goat’s hooves is, indeed, exactly what you would picture. It reminds me of clipping a dog’s toenails, but with more surface area, kicking, and manure. Good dirty fun. Pictures soon to come...

Tags: raw dairy, unpasteurized dairy, goats, cows, milking, cheese

For me as a child shopping meant a monthly trip to the commissary on whichever military base we were living on at the time. My mom would stock up on paper products, canned fruits and vegetables, hot dogs, ground meat, margarine, American cheese, milk, and black and white boxes of generic macaroni and cheese. She would round out her purchases with a bunch or two of bananas and a vat of chunky, hydrogenated peanut butter. These trips were supplemented with visits to the local grocery store where we would stock up on canned biscuits, Cheetos, soda, fried chicken, and the occasional treat for dessert. We also ate out frequently at diners, buffets, and fast food restaurants.

When we went for a visit to my grandparents house in Missouri, I had fresh green beans for the first time in my life. My reaction? “These taste like dirt, grandpa!” I was completely unused to the complex, rich taste of fresh produce. I can understand why parents have such a difficult time getting their children to eat healthy food because I started out that way too, preferring packaged items with artificial flavors to real, whole foods.

Looking back on that time, it’s hard to find the logic in our families food choices. My mom is a registered nurse, so she took nutrition classes. She never let us have sugary breakfast cereal, and candy was a rarity in our home. So why was sugar so forbidden while all these other junk foods poured into our house? It’s hard to say, really... I guess it comes down to this: like anyone else, my mom was doing the best she could. I do remember pot roasts with onions, potatoes, and carrots. There must have been some fresh green veggies too, just not often enough to be memorable.

In the eighth grade I broke away from my families food traditions and became a vegetarian, a decision that saved me from the struggle with weight faced by so many. At first I was a “french fry vegetarian”, eating the standard American diet, just without the meat. Over the years I’ve gained more and more knowledge about the pitfalls and consequences of this kind of food, and I’ll never go back.

The thing that got me to make meal plans and shopping lists was a job as a personal chef. Before that I would wing it, buying ingredients for a meal or two, then making whatever else I could from what was in the pantry. I would stop by the store a few times a week for essential ingredients I had forgotten, and this time added up.

So, I got a notebook just for menus and sat down with my cookbooks once a week to pick which recipes I would use. As I chose my recipes I wrote down which ingredients I would need, and how much, sometimes checking back to see if I already had an item. This created a flow where one week’s extra ingredient would fold over into the next week’s recipes; I soon had the contents of my fridge and pantry memorized so I didn’t overbuy any particular thing. Except coconut milk, for some reason I would buy a can every single time I went to the store...

I began to adapt and skill built upon skill; I would finding sale items and remember which recipes I could use them in, decide on the fly whether or not to change the plan or save the find for next week. I suddenly knew what everything cost, and jumped on sales, stocking up for the future. What follows are all the little things I’ve learned along the way about how to find organic and local food at it’s freshest, cheapest, and greenest. Shoot me an e-mail with any tips you want to share and I’ll add them to the site!