Pumpkin Fudge

Pumpkin Fudge

Joan sent us a pound of Pumpkin fudge for Christmas. I was a bit hesitant to try it (I'm a bit of a fudge snob and pumpkin just didn't sound like a flavor I'd like.) Wow! Spicy pumpkin with some pecan crunch mixed in. Perfect for a frigid winter morning with a cup of coffee on the side. Now I have to talk her out of the recipe. It will probably be a seasonal offering, but it should go nicely with our chocolate, peanut butter, and butter pecan fudge. I'm also considering a chili chocolate fudge. Can't wait till we have goat milk again so I can get back to making fudge.

Butter

WE DID IT!!!! Goat milk (or cream to be exact) butter! It took a quart of cream, the yield of two gallons of milk, and almost two hours of spinning the churn, but it is butter. It is salted and in the refrigerator waiting to be slathered on toast and waffles in the morning. I did take a taste and ... YUMMMM!

cranking the churn

butter to be pressed and salted

We are effective, but not efficient yet. The whole process needs some tweaking, but it is nice to know that everything works. We still have a quart of goat milk cream to use for butter and (this is the best part) a quart of May's cream (so thick you can stand a spoon in it) that is going to figure prominently in the ice cream making scheduled for Saturday.

New Tools

We acquired some new tools today. Should make it possible to do some more interesting things with all the milk with which we are blessed, like making butter and ice cream. We have been looking for them for a couple of years now, but they are pricy. These came available from someone cleaning out their basement. The price was very good, and after a bit of a clean-up, they seem to be in excelent condition. Over the next couple of days we will put them to the test. Fingers crossed and spoons ready.

cream separator and butter churn

Chocolate and deep thoughts

I spent a good chunk of the day making various kinds of fudge to take to the Farmers Market on Saturday. I enjoyed making it, the smells were wonderful, and knowing I would have something more than eggs and a bit of salad to sell helped me keep going when it stopped being fun. Making fudge involves a lot of stirring. It only takes a fairly small part of the brain to accomplish, so the rest of mine was busy thinking again (not always a good thing). Since I was making goat milk fudge, I thought a lot about milk, micro-dairies, local food production, and barriers I keep finding.

Before we moved back to Ohio, we lived in a state where it was legal to sell Raw Milk. It is legal in about half of the states in the U.S. I ran a very small grade A raw milk goat dairy. In these states raw milk has to meet the same safety requirements that pasteurized milk must meet. The dairy and the milk are inspected and tested regularly by the same USDA inspectors that inspect and test the larger, pasteurized milk dairies. None of the states where raw milk is legal have any difference in the incidence of milk born illness than non raw milk states. Our milk was consistently better on all the inspection standards than the milk from the larger pasteurized dairies. Ours was a very small dairy. We only milked 12 goats. We did everything by hand with minimal equipment. Still, we exceeded the state and national standards for safety. People loved our milk. Some drove from as far as three hours away to get it. It was a good business for a tiny farm.

Here in Ohio it is illegal to sell raw milk. The stated reason is public safety, but the other states that allow it's sale have already shown that this isn't a real concern. If I want to be a dairy and sell my milk to the public, I must pasteurized it. The equipment to pasteurized milk costs between 10 and 25 thousand dollars. Because my "farm" is so small, I don't have the land equity to qualify for a farm loan. I qualify for no farm programs I am aware of. If I got bigger then maybe I would, but that defeats what I am trying to do. The state laws prohibiting raw milk sales prevent me from developing a micro-dairy in my community. They force me to find ways around the law, like goat share agreements, and they take away the safety of federal inspection in the process. I still ensure my milk is clean and safe, I know what the standards are, and what the procedures are to meet those standards. But, having another set of eyes, from outside, looking at what I do was a comfort at our other dairy.

Raw Milk laws are only one of the barriers that the government has placed in the way of small farmers that result in fewer and fewer small local producers. Other things, like an increasingly costly and complex certification program for Organic products, or the NAIS and other "safety" tracking programs, or the various farm "support" measures for which most small farms don't qualify all stand in the way of building a local food system. As a small producer I find it maddening.

So, I make fudge. It is a way I can use some of my goat milk in a product I can sell. I suppose I could make soap, but it isn't my love. Maybe the food system will teeter enough, or crash and little local guys like me will get a chance to shine. I hope we can find sanity before something like that happens.

Beautiful Farm Weekend

Yesterday was brilliant!!! we almost hit 80 degrees F. The sky was clear and bright, the grass was growing so fast you could almost hear it, and we got a lot done. First, we rearranged everyone on pasture. All the critters are happy and fat. We are a few weeks away from our next baby goat, so everything can calm down for a while. Next, we transplanted last years strawberries into the end of the bed of new strawberries (this is not a recommended commercial practice. it is easy to transfer disease and poor genetics this way, but...). We received a flat of berries from a grower in Michigan last year, and planted them in a bed we had available. Turned out to be a terrible place for them, as a result they were abandon, walked on, mowed, and generally abused. This spring they came back with a vengeance. I figured if they were that tough they deserved a place in the strawberry patch.

The berry beds

After planting, cleaning up, and loads of other morning chores, we needed some fun. So, we went to see Nim's Island in the theater. The kids loved it, and the adults enjoyed it too.

Sunday dawned, after a 4 hour blackout from the local utility co. (need to get off the grid, but that is another project for another time.), to find a total of nine chicks peeping in the kitchen. We started with 14 eggs, sacrificed one to the study of embryology, and finally hatched all but four. We will give the remainder until Monday morning, and then declare them duds. All the chicks, including the one I had to help because the membrane adhered to it's feathers, seem to be doing well. They have moved to a brooder box in the greenhouse. It is nice to have them out of the kitchen. We had a gentle rain most of the day, which settled the strawberries in nicely. Spring cleaning and cooking took over in the house. The hit of the day was the fudge which was, depending on who you asked, variously "good", "WOW", or "to die for". The last was from my wife (who has been somewhat skeptical of goat milk products) which gives me a glimmer of hope...

Fudge

We tried our feta. It needed a good rinse after the brine, but it was quite good. There is hope on the cheese making front. However, the goat milk fudge seems to be a universal hit, so we may go to market with that first.

Here is a parting shot of our tomatoes from the greenhouse for all you anxious gardeners.

Tomatoes in bloom

Eggs, Milk, and Gandhi

Eggs

We started some eggs in the incubator yesterday. The incubator is on loan from the county extension service. They have all kinds of stuff for people to use. Since we are not sure how this whole project will turn out, borrowing it was a better option than buying (they are a bit pricey for a one time use.) I'm not sure what kind of mutt chickens we will end up with. the hens we have are Red Star (a red sex-link hybrid), Black Star (same as the red except black), Silver Laced Wyandottes, Partridge Rocks, Rose Comb Brown Leghorns, and Araucanas. We have are one Araucana, and one Silver Spangled Hamburg rooster. Should be interesting to see what comes out.

Rowan picked out the eggs from the mornings collection. He wanted all different colors. He placed them in the turner. This is a great device. Without it the eggs would need to be turned three times a day. Too much work!

Next we added water to the channels in the base of the incubator. This keeps the humidity up which the eggs need.

The egg turner loaded with eggs was placed in the base. There is a wire mesh over the top of the water channels. Without the turner the eggs would have just rested on the mesh.

The cover was placed over everything. Then we plugged it in and watched the temp come up. The eggs need to stay at about 100 deg for the next 21 days.

Milk

A friend from up the road stopped by with her two grandchildren. They had been pestering her about seeing the goats. The got here just at feeding time and had a great time feeding the babies and gathering eggs for me. They went home with eggs, milk, and smiles.

Gandhi

The friend with the grandkids has been pestering me about getting milk from us ever since we got the goats. At first we just didn't have the milk to spare, and later I got nervous about the Law. Selling Raw Milk is illegal in Ohio. Even if we were a licenced dairy (which we are not yet) we could not sell milk to individuals without pasteurizing it. The milk police here have been pretty hard on the few herd share programs in the state. So... I was hesitant to start. The other day I ran into a commentary on one of Gandhi's speeches and that got me thinking. The state only has power if we all cooperate. Well, I'm going to follow Gandhi on this one and choose the path of non-cooperation. I drafted a goat share agreement today and sent it home with our friend. We'll see where we go from here.