Wild Moon Cottage is a small working homestead in the pristine Ozark Mountains. We have dairy goats, poultry, organic herb and vegetable gardens, a start of a tiny fruit orchard, several black walnut trees, wild berries and fields of wildcrafting goodness. We raise our own milk, our own eggs, much of our own medicine and food. I do laundry by hand, make my own vinegar, candles, soap, bread, cheese ........ For a living I am an artist and herbalist. My goal for myself and our homestead is to be as self sufficient and self sustaining as possible.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

6.6.10 goat milk butter and other stuff




We have butter! not much but ... fresh butter from our own goats milk! It took about 4 days of skimming the cream off the top of just the morning's milk (evening milk has been going to help feed the feral cats -kitten season-). We did it with the simple shake jar method and ended up with around 3 tablespoons of wonderful butter and less than a teaspoon buttermilk. Oddly it tastes like salted butter but I didn't add anything.


We have a cream separator but haven't used it yet. To get enough butter to freeze and use for baking I'm sure I'll have to but it's very nice to be able to make a little butter here and there the simpler way. On the trade off between having our own sweet delicious goat milk just a few steps from our door and getting less butter and cream to buying lovely whole raw cows milk from a few miles away and having lost of butter and cream .... I'll take our goat milk anytime.


Speaking of goats, I've amended their feed again and will be changing it on the Barn page. I'm no longer feeding sweet feed at all, just crimped oats and black oil sunflower seeds. I was going to add some other things but they've been on this change for over a week and are doing wonderfully. I'm also getting 1/4 to 1/2 cup more milk per day. The other change I made was that we were feeding 1/4 prairie grass and 3/4 alfalfa daily and have switched to a alfalfa hay completely. I have been buying square bales for some time now but recently got a large round bale and am going to see how they do on it and how well it does.

1 comment:

Linda said...

Haven't tasted goat butter for a long time. A few yrs back my sister milked 15 goats twice a day by hand. Oh did she have lots of milk.

I did make some butter by rolling it in a jar with ice using raw cows milk, yum .

That is strange how it taste salted already. Could it be the new change in feeding? That would be even better for ya not to add salt. But I like that salt : )

tc linda