Goats and goat cheese

The Husband has been doing a wonderful job of milking Lucille twice a day. Helen is not the least bit cooperative, but then Lucille (her mother) wasn't last year either. Second time's a charm?

I am in the process of my fourth attempt at chevre, that soft goat cheese that tastes so much better than what you can buy in the store. For almost as long as we have been coming up here, we have been buying it from Alyssa, of Painted Goat Farm, at the Cooperstown Farmer's Market.

Maybe, just maybe, after years of practice with the chevre, I will be able to recreate the aged cheese that she calls a "Cinderella log" which has ash in the otherwise white rind, but we are a LONG way from that!

For now, I am reading 3 different books and whatever I can find online. My first try was edible, but did not set curds as well as it should have. I lost a lot of it in the whey. You are supposed to be able to use just vinegar or lemon juice (no rennet or starter) but that recipe involved heating the milk and I did not have a dairy thermometer, so possibly it was the wrong temperature. My second attempt (as described in Brad Kessler's book Goat Song) was perfect, but I used some of Painted Goat's goat yogurt as the starter, and have not gotten anymore since then. So the third attempt was not so perfect...no starter, I used more rennet, and it came out kind of dry and rubbery. I started the fourth attempt today with a tiny bit of Chobani yogurt and less rennet.

When the proper starter (mesophilic) and dairy thermometer arrive in the mail next week, I think most of my problems will be solved. Chevre is supposed to be one of the easiest cheeses to make, but without the right ingredients, and trying to follow 3 (or more) completely different recipes, well I guess you learn as you go!

On a sad note: Our little goat boy, Bart, died kind of unexpectedly on Sunday morning. He was never very healthy to start with, and just never seemed to grow from when we got him in mid-June. We sent him back to June's place, and she nursed him back to health as best she could, but even a month with her intensive care didn't make him that bouncy baby buckling that we thought he would be. We are not sure what happened, only that we miss him.

Rest in peace Little Bart.