Goat’s Milk Ice Cream

I’ve been getting enough milk from our goat Cupcake to make ice cream today!  I got the recipe from “Goats Produce Too! The udder Real Thing Volume II” by Mary Jane Toth.  The book sure has some great “tested by her” recipes.  She lists everything from desserts to cheese to sausage and my next experiment might be French Style Chevre, a type of soft cheese similar to Philadelphia Cream cheese.  I need five quarts of whole goat’s milk to make the Chevre so I’ve been thinking about buying a second milk goat, lol.

Strawberry Ice Cream

2 c goat milk

2 c goat cream (I subbed raw cow’s cream because I didn’t have enough goat cream)

1 c sugar (I subbed Xylitol I ground in the blender to make it finer)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 c strawberries (fresh or frozen)  I used fresh that I put in the blender for a minute

**I didn’t follow the directions because my ice cream maker is a bit different.  I’ll post what I did then follow with the directions from the book.

Place crushed strawberries in an 8 cup measuring cup, add milk and cream.  Add fine ground Xylitol.  Add tsp. of vanilla extract.  Give the whole thing a stir and pour into ice cream maker (I have a Cuisinart) for 20 minutes or until done.

Book directions:

Place crushed strawberries in the ice cream canister.  Stir in remaining ingredients, stirring to mix well.  Freeze as directed.

Blogger, Google Doc, Images

I was going through some older posts and noticed most of my photos/images are gone.  I guess when Google Docs did something it broke the link, yet when I go to Google Docs all the photos are there.  It would be a huge job to get all the photos back so I’m going to skip that unless I really need to show something.  It’s frustrating because I used Google Docs for quite awhile before switching over to Windows Live Writer, and now I hear they are doing away with that too.  I’ve googled the heck out of this and can’t really find much info about it, gosh you would think more than me would have this problem??  I was hoping for a quick fix but no luck, hopefully I find something.

Goats on the Ranch!

It’s been awhile since I posted but in all fairness I have been busy and, before that, very sick with an abscess tooth!  Tooth pain is not fun, not fun at all!  Twenty-nine years ago I ended up in the hospital for five days with a very swollen face due to an abscess tooth… this past week has brought back a flood of memories but luckily I didn’t get the swollen face again, although the endless throbbing pain pretty much stops at that point.  Luckily my dentist was in his office on Canada Day and he was able to do half a root canal, tomorrow I get the other half done.  The antibiotics didn’t really kick in until Thursday, six days after the first hint of pain began, but all is well now and I do believe I will be able to chew on my left side again.

Other news (as you probably guessed in my title) is we have two goats on the Ranch!  We picked them up on Saturday and they are Nubian Boer cross.  Meet:

Cupcake

And her kid Muffin:

Cupcake has been quite a handful although she was great last night but today she was crying something terrible whenever we left and she couldn’t see us.  She jumped the fence a number of times and has now just settled down for the night.  As long as there is someone out near her pen she is fine but, boy oh boy, leave her and she’s crying like a baby!  We have a ghetto blaster hanging out our window and an extra string of baler twine on the top of the fence and that seemed to help.  Tomorrow we will increase the fence a bit more and hopefully that will help.

My son-in-law Duane has built the pen and shelter and today he worked on the milking station.  It turned out really great and tomorrow he will finish it.  I had Cupcake up on it and did manage to get a teeny bit of milk out of her and I think she’s doing great for never using a milk station before!  Here her and Muffin are jumping and checking it out.

Well it’s late and I’m off to bed, super tired tonight!  Have a great night everyone and I’ll post more pics soon.

Dishwasher Cubes

I'll admit I was a bit skeptical if these would work.  A few years ago I tried a homemade dishwasher powder and I didn't like it but I have to say these homemade dishwasher cubes work pretty darn good.

I got the recipe from here: http://www.louises-country-closet.com/2013/03/homemade-dishwasher-detergent-cubes.html  I pretty much followed the recipe except for the bottled lemon juice, I used real lemon that I actually squeezed because I didn't have a bottle of "Real Lemon," lol.

I had bought the silicone mini ice cube trays to freeze food I was going to use in my blender for smoothies and they were a tad small but they work great for the dishwasher cubes.  I use one cube in my dishwasher and not only did all my dishes come clean but I didn't have the funky smell I usually get from my dishwasher, it was nice and lemony.

From the recipe I got 27 cubes, just make sure to really pack it down, let it dry overnight, and they will pop right out the next day.

Girlfriends!

Stewart, Russel, and Sam have girlfriends!  We started with four peahens and Pops had them in Grandma's chicken coop for about a week.  The boys were pacing and showing off all up and down the fence, it was ridiculous, but we all know boys when they are showing off for girls.



Pops let them out and they quickly migrated over to my house.  They spent time perusing my garden a few times a day.  After a few days there was only three and a body was discovered over in the Gully Field, sadly one had been killed but we don't know by what.  If it were coyotes they probably wouldn't have left a body, and feathers would have been all over the place.  I didn't see the girls for a few days, most likely they were hiding from fear, and now only two have come back, we haven't found another body.  The remaining two are now sticking very close to my back deck and my newly planted garden (grrrrh) but I think they know this is a safe place.