Coyote Ridge FarmsWelcome To Our Rural Blog

Some of you know that Carol grew up as a ‘Townie‘.  With that said, more folks know her as a farm gal.  But being on the farm for only 2 years, there are many experiences left to explore.

The last 2 days, Carol has found herself outside the ring of a couple local-ish livestock auctions, looking for goats & chickens.  It seems we are selling more livestock and poultry directly to our customers than we think we can replace sustainably.  It’s a good position to be in [business-wise] but we want all of our customers (present and future) to be able to buy the meat they want and still have a good selection in which to do so.  So, Carol has been looking primarily for more meat goats as well as a dairy goat or two… the last few weekends, we have been selling-out of raw goat milk too.

Well, today, Carol found a few things at one of the auctions she attended.  She did find some goats, but only dairy goats.  These goats will help improve her herd as she intends to cull some of her lesser quality milkers.  She also purchased a few more layer hens – yep… we have been selling out of eggs as well.  We have standing orders for 6-8 dozen and we haven’t been able to meet the demand.  My question to Carol, after she got home, was how does she know if she got hens that were actually going to lay for us.  It seems that when the hens lay eggs on the way home from the auction, chances are the hens are in good working order.  We’re both happy.  BTW:  You can buy our fresh eggs in Kerkhoven from Kristine at Inspiring Path Alternatives.

Another thing she bought was this little tool.   Or maybe I should say “little tools”.  She bought 2 cases of them.

Tote-N-Cut bale handling/feeding device

She may have paid too much for them… who knows.  But, we have one down in the barn, awaiting to be used.  It looks like it would be a handy thing to have around, but I guess the proof is in the pudding.  If you want one, contact Carol.  She’s selling them for only $2/each.  I tried to find some information about them on the Internet, but came-up empty.  As you can see, they are/were locally made… the question is “When?”

Carol also bought a Home Health brand home milk/juice pasteurizer, if for no other reason than to give folks a chance to experience or taste our farm-fresh dairy products without the worry of things made from raw milk as seeming weird.  Believe it or not, but some folks still think milk comes from a carton and not a cow or goat.  The pasteurizer Carol bought is a low temp unit.  Instead of heating the milk to 165°F for 15 seconds, it heats it to 145°F for 30 minutes.  The lower heat process does not kill all the helpful/healthful micro-organisms, like the beneficial pro-biotics… just the bad (if the milk were not handled properly).  The price of this handy-dandy appliance was 50¢, minus the 25¢ worth of puzzles she sold [that came with the pasteurizer].  Once home, we tested the Home Health pasteurizer and it seems to work perfectly.  If you would like to taste some pasteurized goat milk or goat milk cheese, let Carol know before heading out to the farm.  Of course, our goat milk soap does not need pasteurized milk – soap is soap (even if it is weird).

With effort to live more naturally and to make things for ourselves, Carol started the conversion of some of our milk kefir to water kefir.  The first question you may have is: “Why do we need water kefir?”  Water kefir is used to naturally carbonate fruit juices and to make fresh homemade soft drinks.  You can buy water kefir, but we are choosing to make it.  The recipe Carol is using to convert milk kefir grains to water kefir is located here.

Kefir, raisins, raw sugar, water & lemon

In this photo, you can see all the ingredients.  It’s simple and good for you.  Normally, it would be done fermenting in 24-72 hours.  But since this is the first batch for this kefir, we may need to do it twice.  Then someone needs to taste it.  To be honest, the main reason Carol chose this recipe is for the conversion… not to drink.  The recipe came from yourkefirsource.com.

Once you have your water kefir grains fully transitioned to water, use this recipe to have a constant supply of of kefir water.  Mix it with your soda syrups for home made soft drinks or add it to your favorite juices to make a fun naturally carbonated drink.  It costs pennies to make.

The last couple of days have been cheese making days.  This weekend, Carol made 2 lbs of Mozzarella from some of the farm’s raw goat milk.  She also whipped-up a batch of goat milk cream cheese.  Tonight (Tues) Madison is making her own batch of Mozzarella Cheese.   Madison has decided to make cheese for a school science project.  As you can see from the photo below, there really is no need for fancy equipment.

These are all the supplies and equipment needed to make mozzarella cheese

Madison has learned where rennet comes from and what it does.  For those of you who do not know, natural rennet comes from the stomach of young calves.  It is an enzyeme that thickens milk to keep it from passing through the calf’s system before it can be digested.  We use a liquid organic vegetable rennet for cheese making, which seems to work just fine for our needs.  From one gallon of milk, we get approx. 1 lb of cheese.

On Monday afternoon, Carol & her friend [and natural healer], Kristine, brought daughter Chastiti’ to the clinic for blood work and a routine consult.  Both Carol and Kristine were surprised to how open the doc was to adding some natural medicine to Chas’ program.  In fact, the good doctor gave Carol a hand written recipe for a probotic smoothie.  It is one of the smoothie recipes he makes for his family and can be made with yogurt made at home from the raw milk we get from our dairy goats.

footnote:  Kristine runs a natural healing clinic in Kerkhoven.