curds and whey

Sadly this will be another short post. I am exhausted beyond belief. I got 1 less hour of sleep last night and it has thrown me off considerably.

These posts are hard to write because I learn so many new things everyday I don't know what to write about. Today we picked garlic which was an amazing upper body workout because you have to fight with the dirt to break the garlic free. We did more weeding (see my weeds post from a few days back), and then recycled soil from old planters.

It got so hot today it was hard to work. Hit 104. Ouch. Apparently I really do like extremes because first I live in Minnesota and then I move here. Am I well?

But it was so hot it was hard to work. It got humid and that's unusual. Therefore we are starting work earlier tomorrow; that is, 6 am instead of 7.

Tonight Shelby invited Emily and I to her daughter's birthday party. It was fun, we met new people, hung out, ate pizza. In between John was showing us how to make cheese. Woohoo! That is one of the big reasons why I came here. He used the goat milk from yesterday and today to work on a blue cheese. He showed us how to bring it up to temp, add cultures, add rennet, cut the curd, drain off the whey (which goes to the chickens - apparently they had a chicken get stuck in the bucket of whey once, lol), then place the curd in a ring mold and flip it every 45 minutes. Sadly at this point we had to leave, but there's a lot more to the process.

However, he loaned us a cheese book and some culture and we are going to make yogurt, then begin experimenting with other cheeses, particularly chevre. Needless to say I am pretty excited to have this experience with raw goat milk since I've been hunting it down for so many years.

Okay. Bedtime. Early day tomorrow.