City Girl Turned Goat Farmer?

As you know, I've been trying to find somewhere to volunteer while I'm not working.  I thought about the local art gallery, but I could do that in NYC and I really wanted to do something different.  Then I thought I would call Windy Bank Farm, a local farm on the island, and see if they needed my services.  I'm trying to grow my own garden, so thought I could give them my time and they could give me some tips.  On Sunday, I was talking to Mark (one of the guys who was here for the bbq) about this, he and his wife Kiera turned us on to Windy Bank.  He told me that one of his clients was looking for help with his goat cheese operation, sounds cool, right?  I mean, I like cheese and when would I ever learn how to make it?  Monday morning, I called James Tucker and last night, I went to his farm to check out the operation and see if I was up to the challenge.

We all know cheese comes from milk and goat cheese comes from goat milk.  So, after we went through what goes on in the cheese room, we went out and fed the baby goats......out of a bottle!  They are nine weeks old and just starting to eat grass, plants, etc...and are being weened off the formula.  If having baby goats jumping up on me wasn't a surreal experience, feeding them out of a bottle definitely was!  After that you ask?  On to the milking room.  Time to feed and milk the mama goats.  That's right, I milked a goat!  Can you imagine it?!? I'm still laughing!!!!

I took some pictures of my new friends so you can picture it for yourselves......

Here are my mama goats!

There are 6 of them - thought I'd show you what I was dealing with in this picture!

Yep, BIG goats!

And the babies!  This one looks like bambi!

The question on all of your minds.....is she going back????

Yes, I am going back tonight.  James is going on vacation this summer and needs someone to keep the farm going while he's away, so I need to learn how to milk these goats in a timely fashion!  Practice makes perfect!

Oh, and we tasted the cheese - he makes 3 kinds, a regular goat, a goat blue and almost like a goat brie type.  They are DELICIOUS!  And, James was nice enough to give me one of each to take home.