Chocolate Cheesecake Frozen (goat milk) Yogurt

With all the excess milk around the place, I decided to make yogurt last week.

My first step was to culture a jar of milk. I used a couple tablespoons of plain Chobani greek style yogurt. I didn't heat the milk up, adding culture to already warm milk has been giving me more of a cheese like product.

Then I let it sit on the counter for the day. I don't have a yogurt maker or even a heat pad, and wanted to try a colder incubation temperature. I let it set until I could see yogurt globs and whey starting to separate.

Then, I let it sit in the refrigerator for a few days. I tend to get busy and forget stuff, but this didn't need immediate attending to.

When I had time, I filtered as much whey as I could get out of the yogurt with a milk filter.

After a week in the refrigerator, I decided it tasted perfect. Because I don't use any thickeners, it was kind of a runny concoction. I'll have to experiment with thickening agents soon.

Yesterday afternoon, I decided it would be better as frozen yogurt. Why not!?

I added a bunch of chocolate syrup to the yogurt and shook it well. It turned brown, with some white specks in it. The white specks were the cream that I couldn't get when I skimmed it off before yogurt making. And, it was delicious cultured cream, like a very mild cream cheese. Perfect with chocolate!!

After mixing in the chocolate real well, I put the whole jar in the freezer with the lid on loosely. I took it out of the freezer every few hours and shook it up, then returned it to the freezer.

This morning after finishing the chores, I checked on it.

It had frozen to a beautiful not quite solid, not quite creamy consistency. The white cream chunks were still intact and visible in the mixture. I dipped in a spoon, and tasted my handiwork. It's amazing tasting!! It is very rich though, and I couldn't eat very much of it.

So here's the recipe, for anyone who cares to try this.

One quart goat milk, raw

Two tablespoons plain yogurt

Chocolate syrup to taste



Take chilled milk from refrigerator and skim whatever cream has separated off the top. No need to be diligent about this step, the resulting cultured cream cheese actually compliments this frozen treat. Eat the cream, or save it and add to the yogurt right before freezing it.

pour about a cup of milk into a glass. Add two tablespoons plain yogurt (I used Chobani brand).

Stir well until yogurt has dissolved and no chunks remain. Dump this mixture back into the container of milk.

Put lid on jar loosely, do not tighten. Let it sit on your counter until you see some definite yogurt action happening. I let mine incubate about 8 hours, but you may need more or less time.

Return to refrigerator when you feel your mixture is yogurt and not milk. Ignore the whey that is starting to separate out. Whey is an almost clear liquid, a by-product of Greek yogurt. It won't harm anything.

Let it chill in the refrigerator for....idk? Three, four days maybe.

Strain your whey off, to the best of your ability. Use muslin cloth, cheesecloth, pantyhose (my favorite so far!), milk filters, coffee filters, whatever will strain the liquid out and not the solids. Cheesemaking and dairy products should be fun, not a chore with exact temperatures to attain and special equipment to spend money on. Use what you've got, and have fun!!

Anyway, is your whey strained off yet? I tend to be an impatient soul, and not all the whey drained out of mine. That is OK, just do what you can and put it back in the refrigerator when you're tired of straining.
Try to make sure you don't strain ALL the whey off, you want yogurt consistency and not yogurt cheese.

After another 4 days, or two weeks or whatever you choose, remove the yogurt from refrigerator. It should still have a more mild taste and not be punch you in the face tangy.

Add chocolate syrup, a bunch of it. Taste the mixture, is it chocolatey enough? If not, add lots more. If so, add just a little bit more and mix the syrup in well. Add cream and mix in at this stage, if you saved your skimmings.

Put it in the freezer, container and all. Keep the lid loose so the liquid expansion doesn't crack the jar.

Let it freeze, it takes quite awhile. Every 4 hours or so if possible take the jar out and shake its contents. Don't forget to tighten your lid first!

When it's frozen, it is done. Enjoy!

Cordwood Shed Build, Part 2

The shed project is coming along very slowly, but some definite progress has been made. This is a heck of a lot of work, compared with conventional shed building!

In my last shed related post, I was preparing poles for the loft in the shed. We'll continue where I left off.

I finished prepping and sanding the poles, then covered them with roofing tar and let them set out overnight. I saved the ends of the poles to cut up for the wall.

Then I dug out holes directly underneath where my loft corners are, using a plumb bob. I backfilled the holes to get the posts set to exactly the right height and set straight, with the loft above them level.
Then I used cement and packed it into the holes tightly for stability.

I had cut notches into the posts before setting them in their holes. The shelf of the notches support the loft framing.

These are my very first notches of any kind, and were cut myself (yep....a girl did this!). Using an old handsaw with the broken handle held together with Gorilla tape was not the least bit helpful... but now the job is done, and it looks 'rustic'. Hand hewn for sure.

I purposefully left the lip of the 2x6 the posts support proud of the pole, as sort of a reminder of where the edge of the loft is while I am up there.

Nice and level on the lip of the 2x6. The side edges of the loft have been set level too, but the level and my eye disagree. It looks crooked to me somehow!

A better look at the new, smaller loft.

Here are before and after photos of the loft renovation.

The section I cut out of the loft fit almost perfectly within the poles on one end. It's not siding, but why not? The framing was almost perfect for this temporary wall! have definite plans to expand this wall out later, but am trying not to get too far ahead of myself on this.

The gap at the bottom will be fixed with cinder blocks and pinned into the ground with rebar, then filled with cement. Just like the foundation of my two cordwood walls are done, but for this wall also.

Then I used the last part of a bag of mortar that was open, and made some small progress on the cordwood wall. My pointing skills need definite help!

Notice the cracks that developed already in the mortar at the bottom where I started the wall this last week. Definitely not going to do cordwood again, at this point.

My mortar mix may need to be fine tuned, instead of mixing my own mortar I have been buying it bagged and adding wet sawdust. I am torn on whether to go through the bother of mixing my own for 16' of total wall I have planned with this buildng method.

Log cabin style next? Stockade walls? I have plenty of small posts already cut and drying, and some nice size knobcone timbers, and an Alaska sawmill that is one heck of a workout to mill logs with.  We will see!

That's about it for shed progress this week.
I have a table saw available and set up at the site for use now, and plan on cutting more wood pieces to length before working on this more. Tomorrow I have another project to do some work on and I will return to this labor of love next week!

To be continued, of course.

Hardscrabble Products September 2016

We don't have much off the farm this month. The garden is doing poorly for the most part.

Chicken:
We still have a couple of extra broilers in the freezer. Price is $5 per lb for pasture raised chickens. Whole or parts available.

Goat milk:

I have one milk share available this summer. Contact me for details, this will supply you with around a gallon a week.

I do sometimes have misc milk available for soap or feeding animals, cheesemaking, ect. Supplied by the quart, courtesy of Opal. Ask about supply beforehand, also willing to barter for farm eggs and produce.

Culinary and medicinal herbs:

I have fresh rosemary this month in large quantity.

Golden Lemon thyme available in small quantities.

Lemon balm available in quantity.

Aloe vera available in small quantities.

Echinacea flower available in small quantity. Flowers are dry.

Herb prices vary and are sold by the oz.

Contact me for pricing or availability any time.
Hardscrabblehomestead@gmail.com

Hand Cut Posts

So I decided I needed some extra supports for the loft in the shed, and have tenative ideas about pulling half of the loft out in favor of lighting and a ceiling fan sometime in the future. It would give the structure a less claustrophobic, hobbit hole kind of feeling and open up some needed headspace.

It would also reduce my total square footage, not that the loft space is very big to begin with. We will see, but the supports are needed whether or not part of the loft gets cut out.

Off to find some support beams.

Here, we have rough lengths from a standing dead knobcone pine that was cut down several months ago.

This is what the poles look like when I drag them out of the woods.

I cut all the pine cones, branches and rough cut limb ends down with a handsaw. I strip the bark off with my pocket knife.

Pine beetle damage underneath the bark. This is what killed the tree.

All peeled, bucked, cleaned and sanded with rough grit sandpaper.

I finished one post this morning and am more than halfway done with the second post. When I am finished, these will be cut to length and then the ends will be sliced up to be put into the walls.

Cordwood Shed Build, part 1

A few months back, I decided I needed a hay shed. So I grabbed some warped 4x6s from the scrap lumber pile and drove them into the ground. They weren't square what with the poles warping and my lack of carpentry skill...but hey, it's just for hay! 

Then I added loft framing, and roof rafters. Here is the framing on the shed almost complete.

By this time I had started thinking,
"hey this thing is pretty cool, wonder if I could enclose it for a studio?"

Uh-oh, sounds like I've just talked myself into a lot of extra work.... and I'm STILL going to need a hay shed one of these days!

I added plywood to the loft area first.

Then I added plywood for the roof sheathing.

I used rolled roofing to cover the shed.  Then I sawed off all the ends that stuck out from the loft framing.

The ladder makes the roof looked bowed, but it is not. The ladder is pushing down on the roofing overlap.

Scrap lumber to cut down to size for the walls.

I used cinder blocks with rebar driven into them for wall foundation. I am using this Cordwood method for just two walls for now, to see if this is a good building idea or not.

Cement added to the middle of the cinder blocks and around the rebar anchors.

At this point, I realized that these walls aren't going to be square. Buy hey, no cordwood wall is ever perfectly straight!

The next step was to mortar all the cinder blocks together at the ends. I tried to be careful but my masonry skills just are NOT up to par. Anyone who tells you cordwood masonry takes no skill, is a liar!

Two and a half rods of cut down rebar, eleven cinder blocks, two and a half bags of concrete (mixed and poured by hand), and about half a bag of mortar went into two small wall foundations.


This wall is totally gonna look like a girl built it...... because guess what, she did!

When the foundation was finished, I used the extra mortar mixed in with about 20% wet sawdust and filled in a small part on the base of the smaller wall. I am still waiting on more scrap lumber ends and 6 inch cordwood rounds!

My frank opinion of this building method, so far, is not that great. This is a lot of heavy lifting, lots of mortar and concrete to mix, there's a ton of bending and stooping involved, and more time consuming than I thought imaginable. This is a LOT of work to put up a wall!!

The economic savings aren't very big, but hopefully this will insulate sufficiently so I won't have to insulate and finish the inside of the walls. If nothing else, it sure looks cool...

To be continued --

Wiring Schematics for Main Solar system

Before I forget-- For anyone wanting to try the DIY solar approach, I have found our original wiring schematics. This is old and beat up, we had it hanging on the wall by the charge controller for a very long time before taking it down. The size of the wiring you use and distance between your components make a big difference, so here is how to do it "to code".

If there are any questions, feel free to email us! We 'll do our best to help.

Hardscrabble's Main Solar System

I'm posting about our solar systems today, so everyone can see where our electricity comes from and how easy it is to set up yourself.

First we have the solar panels. These are sets of (3) 275-watt panels wired in series. There are two sets of panels (6 total) powering the main system. That gives us around 1,150 watts of peak power coming in.

All panel wiring comes to an emergency shut off box before going in to the charge controller.

The panel wires come in to the charge controller, which moniters how much power is coming into the system and adjusts everything accordingly. This component is crucial, it keeps your batteries from getting overcharged and tells you how much power you are producing. It is also programmable to do a whole lot of other cool stuff, like equalizing your battery bank.

From the charge controller, the power goes back outside to the batteries. Here, you see (2) 6volt T-105 golf cart batteries. They are wired in series to give us 12volt of power.

In addition to the solar system wiring, there is an auxillary 12v pump and DC lights wired to the batteries.

From the batteries, we have wires coming into the back of our inverter. The wiring used is the size of battery cables and can be difficult to work with. From the front of the inverter there is a power squid. There is space at the back of the inverter to run your own house wiring from it, if you so choose. No way I was ripping out the walls here to do that, though!

This setup allows us to charge phones, run lights, charge the cordless drill, run a fan, watch movies, ect. It isn't big enough to power a vaccum or the air conditioner or power tools.

For everything the solar system can't handle, there is the generator. This one is a Harbor Freight special, and has been amazingly faithful considering its source. She just got a spark plug change last weekend and is still running strong.

The generator only gets regular use for the air conditioning in summer. Less regular uses for it are the vaccum (we have hardwood floors so mostly just sweep it), charging batteries during long winter storms, running the table saw (or Skilsaw...or the Sawzall, you get the idea.)

Hardscrabble's Tiny Solar System

Here is our small DC solar system.

This is a 45 watt solar array that powers the electric fence for the time being. First, the panels on the shed roof. Very dusty, I'm going to have to do something about that!

Next, the charge controller. This is a cheap 3-amp charge controller, about $20 from Harbor Freight. Not the best quality, but it's been in use over 2 years without issue.

Charge controller goes to the battery. This is just a regular deep cycle marine battery.

In this picture the solar panels are not hooked up to it, because apparently charging the battery while the electric fence is hooked up is NOT a good idea. The battery gets charged once a month or so unless something shorts the fence out, then more frequent charging is required.

This DC electric fencer is wired directly to the battery.

Currently, the electric fence is the only thing this system is running. I do have plans to run one or two DC lights off this system, but have no plans to hook an inverter up to or overuse such a small system.

This setup will give you basic DC lighting and power on a small scale.

Milking The Goat

Meet Opal. She's the star of my one goat, off the grid dairy. Opal is a first generation Mini Alpine. She is a wonderful little goat, and has lived her entire life on our farm.

Tonight, I'm going to go over the details of our milking routine and show you how it's done around here.






First, and probably most importantly, you need to keep your milking equipment sterile. This includes your hands, please wash the grime off before milking. I milk by hand and wish to keep contaminants to a minimum.

My milking equipment is pretty basic: milking containers, disinfectant solution, a rag to wipe off the udder, a brush to keep excess hair out of the milk, bag balm, and milk filters. Here is some of the bare bones equipment for milking, sitting on the milk stand all ready to use.




Next, I get a bowl of sweet COB for her to enjoy while I milk her. Sweet COB is corn, oats, and barley mixed together and sweetened with molasses. This keeps the goat occupied while I milk, and also keeps her in decent body condition while she is lactating. Opal is a heavy milker for such a small goat and needs these treats to maintain body condition. An added bonus is, the grain makes her produce a little bit more milk.

The COB goes into a bucket hung on the front of the milk stand.




After getting her grain ration into her bucket, I open the gate and let Opal out of her pen. She invariably runs over to the milk stand, hops up all on her own and starts eating her grain. Opal LOVES being milked-- please don't ever let someone tell you that milking an animal is'abusing' or 'raping' her. This is absolute nonsense.
Notice how in the above picture, I don't even have her hooked to her little leash. This is all of her own free will.




I brush her off with a medium bristle dandy brush first. This keeps most of the loose hair off the goat so it doesn't fall into the milk. Remember, sanitation is paramount to milk quality. If the milk gets contaminated it can take on a "goaty" taste. Normally the milk tastes very similar to cows' milk, in fact it is difficult to tell the difference between the two species' milk if properly handled and used within a reasonable amount of time.

After brushing, I put a little bit of weak disinfectant solution on a rag and wipe her teats and udder down. We don't want any stray bits of manure, hay, ect. getting into the milk. This also helps minimize bacteria.




After the prep is done I start milking. You need to squeeze the top of the teat off to trap the milk and prevent it running back up into the udder, then squeeze the milk out the end of the teat. This does take some practice to get proficient at, but the basics here are very simple.
At first you may not get much milk per squeeze. Your hands may also get sore partway through.  That is OK, you do get better at it with time! With regular milking, your hands should stop aching within a few weeks and your overall milking time will drop down to just a few minutes.




Here is the result of this evening's milking. When this is all filtered and the foam on the top is accounted for, it equals about a quart and a half (6 cups) of fresh, raw goat milk. The foam at the top of the jar does not filter properly and usually gets fed to the cat.






Now, before I do anything with the milk I finish attending to the goat. I take a smear of bag balm and wipe it on her teats to keep them soft and supple, and to prevent chapping.
Then I put the goat away and feed her a ration of high quality alfalfa hay. The goat does not like to go back home on her own, if you don't lead her back to the pen she will be raiding the turkey feeders and knocking down the fruit trees to girdle them and munch on the foliage. This is destructive, expensive and her extra snacks can give the milk a weird taste. I try to prevent this kind of goat antic at any cost!






All that's left to do now, is filter the milk and get it chilled as quickly as possible.

I put a milk filter over a one quart Mason jar and pour the milk through the filter. This insures there is no hair or bits of hay or anything foreign lurking around in my milk. It takes two jars to hold the contents of this evening's milking.


Milk ready for refrigeration

My first yogurt attempt--it exploded on me!!

After that I screw the lids on the jars, label them with the date and AM or PM milking, and refrigerate in the coldest part of the refrigerator. Believe me, the labels are necessary when you are getting this much milk. Any milk left over in my refrigerator after about a week gets made into cheese, dumped to the dogs, or mixed into the poultry feed for a nice turkey and chicken treat. And don't worry, the cat gets his share too!

I have made cheese, goat butter, and yogurt so far but my methods can still use improvement. I find that milking a goat actually is cost effective versus buying all these dairy products in the store. The feed and supplies I put into the goat cost far less than all these dairy products cost if store-bought, plus I get the satisfaction and peace of mind of knowing exactly what went into the milk products.