September Farm Update

The garden is growing so well this year. I have had an abundance of everything I planted! I have juiced tomatoes and made spaghetti sauce, frozen pounds of squash and zucchini, and canned pickles from the cucumbers.... Here is a peak into that process.

Water bath processing....

Ta-da! Dill pickles!
The animals.....

On the left we have Selah, now 2.5 months old and growing so fast! She loves to play with the other goats and of course climbs on anything she can find.

We finally got the west pasture "goat proof" with field fence so they can work on all the weeds that have taken over. We are about to have some really happy but fat goats!

We have been milking Zeva, the black goat, and she gives us 1/2 a gallon of milk each time. She's a great mama and milker especially since it's her first time.

We have been able to make cheese from the milk and have experimented with different flavors like basil, garlic salt, and honey-walnut. Shown here is the honey-walnut. It's really good on Pita Crackers!

We took a couple gallons of milk over to a friend's place and put it through a cream separator. After it goes through, cream comes out on the left and skim milk comes out on the right. I then tried to make butter out of the cream but the first try didn't work so we need to do some research and try again.

This is what we get at each milking! We kept Selah in the barn bottle feeding her for a couple of weeks while we milked Zeva twice a day. We started getting overrun by milk (a whole gallon a day!) so we've started putting Selah back out with her mama during the day and in the barn at night. So now we only milk in the morning - which is a nice break at evening chore time, not having to milk again.

Here are the rest of the farm animals. They are all doing really well. The kittens are growing fast and Daisy even caught a mouse the other day! Yay! (Since that's the main reason that we got them).

Misty and CC watching the goats when we first let them out on that side!

Daisy having some fresh goat's milk...

Oz, the orange cat is super sweet and let's Hannah carry him around the barn. We have recently let him and Daisy out of the barn and "be free" - and they are so happy. Oz sits on my shoulders while I'm milking and Daisy stares at me until I fill her bowl with warm milk.

Our chickens are now "free range" chickens spending a lot of time in the goat pen and laying eggs in their hay feeder. They also come running when I come out the back door hoping for some veggie scraps. We are really enjoying watching them run around and not "cooped up" (hehe) anymore. In about a month we should be getting about 14 more chicks to add to our flock. There is a high demand for farm fresh eggs in the Tulsa area and we hope to get into that market next spring.