Farm Fresh Goats Milk and Pizza (but not at the same time)…

We have been milking two of our goats for about four or five days now, and we have been getting about a gallon per milking –twice per day. We haven’t tasted any of it yet (for the record, we grew up on goats milk, so I know what it tastes like, but we are just getting back in to raising a goat herd after a fifteen/twenty year hiatus… so we don’t know what these particular goat’s milk tastes like). So far we have been feeding the milk we get to A) Feta B) the barn cats C) the chickens –in that order- and we still have left overs. We have to get the filters in order to strain it before we start drinking it; I’m sure we would survive even if we skipped that step -I doubt the frontiersmen worried much about straining their fresh morning’s milk before cooking with it- but we aren’t going to take any unnecessary risks (we are already going to be drinking unpasteurized milk, might as well make sure it is clean). (That last sentence was sixty-nine words long, and I’m pretty sure it is even grammatically correct-ish.) Either way, the point is, starting on probably Monday I will be experimenting with making different types of goat cheeses, and quite frankly, I’m excited.

I made some homemade pizza the other night, and I just wanted to share a picture of the final product with you guys. Pizza has been a bit of an obsession of mine lately; I have done hours and hours of research on everything from how to ferment the perfect dough, all the way to the temperature, positioning, and type of stone slab you cook it on. I believe I am finally starting to get there; the results are, in other words, flawless/awesome. But, the next step in the project is to produce one hundred percent of the ingredients here on the farm… I have a few different traditional recipes for making the pepperoni and smoking/curing it old style –we already have the farm raised beef; I just need to build the smoker. I don’t know if you can make mozzarella out of goats milk… I hope so, because I don’t want to have to get a dairy cow just to make my pizza… but I will do it! I’m already growing all the herbage and starting all the tomatoes for the sauce, so no worries there… We already grow wheat on the farm, but I will need a grain mill, which is already on the “to purchase” list anyhow.

Well, it is a rainy day here on the farm. I was up early and I just wanted to give you guys a quick little update. I may be posting again this evening if the weather holds shitty, because we’ve actually got a lot done around here this week, and there is plenty to update on. Check back later.