We milked our first goats! (When I said that to the owner, she said, “in life?” I thought that was funny of both of us.)

There is much more process than you would think – grain in the little trays, select 6 hyper goats out of a pen of 20, secure them on the milking platform, take a sample my hand (called stripping), wipe down the udder very carefully (Shawn said to do it like you’re going to put your mouth on it. I asked if the reward for doing it properly was to not have to put my mouth on it…), attach the milking sucker things (will update with proper name), then remove when the goat is drained, apply an anti-bacterial spray to the teats, sanitizing your gloved hands between goats (to not spread anysanitizing your gloved hands between goats (to not spread any illness), repeat for all 6, unlock the clamps that keep the goats in their mini stalls, get the goats out and back to their pens and then repeat. All the while staring at the business end of a goat, that sometimes doesn’t want to be milked.

After the milking is complete, we took it in the big steel jugs to the milk house, in the creamery building. It’s a very precisely sanitary operation, so you have to wear a smock, clean boots, gloves and a hair net. And a beard net, if you’re C! The milk needs to be quickly chilled to 40 degrees, so you put it in a freezer apparatus for a bit while transferring the previous milking’s milk into buckets and wiping and sanitizing everything. Every measure is taken to not taint the milk with any bacterias not involved in the actual cheese making. It’s all intricate and really interesting.

That was my morning shift (6:30 – 10:30am). C slept in and did the same thing for evening chores (4:30 – 8:30pm). We’re working shorter hours this week since we’re new, and will ramp up to 6 hours a day next week.

In the afternoon I did yoga, bought us both new and better boots, went to the grocery store and made dinner. We had pork chops and kale caesar for dinner with Wes, and stayed up until midnight chatting. We got to sleep in today because we’re not on until 11am when we head down to the lower field to move, tag and castrate the lambs we’re raising for meat.