Sunshine for Dinner

Carrots

Our son, Max (not pictured . . .), is five years old, and at the age when kids say a lot of funny things.  He has cracked me up a couple of times lately with his comments about carrots.

When we first started pulling a few carrots to eat at the baby stage, he enjoyed them, but one day he asked me, “Mom, can’t we have some carrots that don’t have these plants growing out of the top?”

Evidently the leafy tops didn’t deter him, because one day he came in the house with damp dirt all around his mouth.  I asked him if he had been eating dirt.  He replied, “No, I’ve been eating dirty carrots!”

I am not a full-time milkmaid, but I have the responsibility for three milkings a week for a small herd of three dairy goats.  One evening I captured the experience to share with the curious.

Here is Daisy, goat extraordinaire.   She looks rather unremarkable, but she milks like a cow (well, not quite, but almost)!  Her teats are huge and so easy to milk and she is giving slightly over a gallon a day of delicious milk.  She has one mission in life - convert sunshine to milk.  She eats leaves all day, and comes to stand by the barn door ready to milk.  Then she goes back out to the field and commences eating more leaves.  Good girl!

This is the business end.

And this is my and Daisy's business concluded for the evening.  She is officially off duty, and I take it from here.

Back in the kitchen, the milk is strained into clean (sanitized in the dishwasher) glass quart jars.  The strainer is stainless steel, and the filters are disposable Schwartz brand milk filters.

The milk is carefully poured into the jars.

It can take a few seconds for the milk to go through the filter.  You can see here some filled jars and one with the plastic lids that we use.  A blue sticker on the lid has a cryptic code, D 2 P, which means Daisy, March 2, evening milking (p as in pm).  Then into the fridge with all the milk.

The used strainer is examined for anything suspicious - what you see is probably bits of hay and a few hairs that have been filtered out.  This is normal detritus.  What you don't want to see is clots of milk/ blood/ mucus that might indicate mastitus, an infection in the udder, but if you see it here you can begin observation/treatment quickly.

Then the washing up - hot soapy water does the trick.  Everything is ready for morning, when we go again.