Flowing with Milk and Honey

Most days it feels like we live in the Promised Land because we are so blessed on our little acre homestead. But if the criterion is a land flowing with milk and honey, this is definitely it! I have not adjusted to the double portion of milk that we are getting now that two does are being milked. My system from last year is inadequate to handle the volume and I am having to come up with new ways to store and consume the milk.

Homemade butter is now on the list of creations from my kitchen using our goats' milk. I feel so accomplished, but the food processor is what really did the work. Butter is as easy to make as the how-to videos on the internet claim. I took thick cream, skimmed off the top of the milk collected from several milkings, and whipped it. The butter fats separated from the milk after about 5 minutes. I pressed out the remaining milk then blended in salt and a little sugar. Goat's milk butter is white, not golden like cow's milk butter, and definitely tastes different. In fact, it doesn't have alot of taste. I divided the batch so I could do some experimenting with garlic, rosemary and other additives. I turned it out into these two cute, red antique Pyrex containers with glass lids that I picked up at the thrift store for pennies. (They are antiques because I remember them from my childhood.)

This is my second year of making goats milk yogurt. It is easy to make too and so delicious. I made a batch yesterday that will be the basis for a quick lunch or healthy fruit smoothies. A little homemade strawberry jam added to the vanilla base ... yum! I prefer sugar as the sweetener, but a good friend prefers the taste when made with honey. I will try using Stevia when that herb grows in the garden this summer, Lord willing.

My stepdaughter is in France this spring. Her groups' Facebook pictures show a La Fromagerie -- the quaint building, lots of goats in the goat pen and a platter of goat cheese with a loaf of homemade bread -- so European! (photo credit to Keith Mattingly) I am inspired to use some of the plethora of milk to make cheese. I tried several hard cheeses last year, gouda and farmhouse cheddar, and found them to be a lot of work! Maybe soft cheeses will be easier.

Milk and honey ... well, my husband is the beekeeper, but I will assist him to extract some honey soon, hopefully this weekend. The best wax, the caps the bees lay on top of the honeycomb to seal the honey, makes the finest base for homemade lip balm (like Burts Bees). It's time to make more lip balm too.