The Final Countdown

In two weeks(ish) we will welcome our baby boy into this world. In less than a month we hope to open the doors of our dairy.

Here's where we're at with all that (in no particular order).

My midwife believes this little troublemaker is sunny-side up in my belly. It doesn't surprise me, Gizmo was also sunny-side up at her birth. We never got her to flip and so I delivered her in a non-delightful way. Matthew, in all his hippy goodness, has already researched the methods used to "spin babies" and I'm spending a lot of time on all fours with my butt sticking up in the air. I do not anticipate this tiny person will make an early appearance and frankly that's fine with me. We're not ready. We have a nook cleared out for him in our house but other than that I have nothing prepared. Because...

We spend every spare minute working on the dairy. But we're to the point where our punch lists are only about 2 items to complete in each section of the dairy. I mean, things are starting to look DONE. We have successfully milked our girls on the pipeline system so all that's left on the equipment front is to turn on the pasteurizer and bottling machine. We passed our well inspection (since the dairy is fed off our well) so the next big inspection is the actual Grade A licensing inspection!

And, when we're not in the dairy, we're talking about cheese! Matthew and I have perfected our chevre recipe to a point that we are proud to call it Farmstead Cheese. I've finally found packaging for our chevre that is in line with our farm's beliefs and values...compostable plastic! It's been so much fun being in the kitchen with each other, taking notes and tweaking recipes. We took it to a party last weekend and thankfully everyone agreed with us! Getting to say that it was from our goats and our recipe was so gratifying.

Of course, our number one fan is probably Gizmo.

We've been serving her chevre on her toast in the mornings (instead of butter), chevre with crackers (and olives, she's obsessed!) for lunch, and chevre with her veggies in the evenings. At 2.5 years old this child loves chevre. And chocolate milk. Chocolate goat milk (of course). It's so cool to see her already connecting with the food we are creating. She knows that her milk comes from the goats that she helps milk every day, the cheese is made out of that milk, the eggs come from her chickens and the meat on her plate is either her pork or her roosters. As a kid I was fed good, healthy food, but because of our transient military lifestyle there's no way we could have raised our own. And so it makes me so proud to see her already "getting it". Food doesn't come from a grocery store. It comes from the earth and it comes from hard working families like the one she is a part of.