Category: Latest From High Reaches

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Latest From High Reaches

Making Mozzarella Goat Cheese

There are lots of recipes around for making mozzarella goat cheese. The one I’ve come up with works well for me.

One of the important things to remember is to start with milk a day or two old and cold in the refrigerator. This cheese likes to be slightly acid and this seems to do the trick.

It is possible to add a bit of citric acid to get that acidity. I’ve done that. It’s hard to judge how much to add and too much will make the cheese very rubbery.

Supplies Needed

When I get ready for making mozzarella goat cheese, I put my stainless steel pot on the stove and fill it with milk. This cheese works best for at least a gallon of milk. Any more I use a gallon and a half, but have worked with two gallons. More than two gallons becomes a problem for me later on.

Turning the stove on low to warm the milk, I set out a Pyrex bowl with a stainless steel colander sitting in it. Next to that is a Pyrex loaf pan to put the finished cheese in.

There is a stainless steel flat canning ladle, a stainless steel flat spatula, a whisk and a cheese thermometer. I use vegetable rennet to set the curd and canning salt.

cover for "Goat Games" by Karen GoatKeeper
Surrounded by lots of goat information and puzzles are recipes for making cheese and other things from goat milk as well as how to cook chevon (goat meat).

Making the Cheese

The milk is heated to 86 degrees. Don’t get more than a degree sloppy with this. Turn off the heat. Whisk in enough rennet to set the curd in about 30 minutes. Put the lid on and wait.

Once the curd is set, use the spatula to cut the curd. First make long cuts every quarter to half inch one way. Next make long cuts across the first ones to make columns. Last use the spatula at an angle to cut the columns first one way, then the other.

The idea is to break the curd up into smaller pieces to make it easier to get the whey out.

Let the cut curd sit for 5 minutes. Then sprinkle canning salt over the top of the curds using a tablespoon per half gallon of milk.

Start slowly heating the curd. Gently stir the curd to mix in the salt and shift the curds from the bottom of the pan to the top. Do this slowly so you don’t break the curds into lots of tiny pieces.

making mozzarella goat cheese
Pictures were on the agenda as I set up to make this week’s batch of mozzarella cheese. The pictures didn’t get taken. And the cheese started disappearing. The camera finally arrived before the last bit of cheese got eaten.

Setting the Cheese

Let the curds heat. Mix the curds every 5 minutes or so to spread the heat more evenly. The curds will shrink as they release whey. They will change and toughen.

The original directions said to heat the curds to 120 degrees. I rarely get that hot. I watch the curds until they get a rubbery, melted look to them.

Now lift the curds out of the whey into the colander. The curds from two gallons of milk fill my colander. Leave the whey heating on the stove.

Rinse your hands in cold water even if you are wearing gloves. Turn the curds in the colander to drain more whey out. I empty whey back into the pot as I go.

Lift the mass up and it should stretch down toward the colander draining more whey. Fold it and let it stretch again several times. (If it won’t stretch, put the mass into the hot whey to get hotter so it will stretch.)

Press the cheese into the loaf pan or whatever mold you are using. I let it cool a bit on the counter before covering and refrigerating it.

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Latest From High Reaches

Making Vinegar Set Ricotta Cheese

Dairy goats giving milk must be milked out regularly or they will stop giving milk. As the refrigerator fills with milk, the question is what to do with this milk. Making vinegar set ricotta cheese is one possibility.

This cheese is considered to be a good beginner’s cheese. It takes few ingredients, is forgiving of sloppy temperatures and can be used in lots of ways.

Cheese Making Equipment

Any cheese makes whey which quickly becomes acidic. A stainless steel stock pot is important. I use a two gallon pot. When I made more kinds of cheese in larger quantities, I had a six gallon pot.

If the pot has bolt heads inside the pot, the milk level should always be below them as they are not stainless steel. The pot must have a lid.

A cheese thermometer is a must. Although making vinegar set ricotta cheese has a wide temperature range, most cheeses have a specific setting temperature. Cheese temperatures range from 70 to 200 degrees.

For making vinegar set ricotta cheese my utensils include a stainless steel whisk, a measuring cup, plastic or glass, and a stainless steel colander. The white vinegar comes from the market.

Making Vinegar Set Ricotta Cheese

Making vinegar set ricotta cheese starts with setting the curds
Whisking the vinegar into the hot milk causes the curds to coagulate and separate from the whey. This can take a minute. Just keep stirring. It makes the mixture look lumpy. If the curds are very fine, it will look grainy.

This is a forgiving cheese as I’ve said. The milk can come straight in from the milk room and be strained into the pot. It can be cold milk from the refrigerator.

Fill your pot and slowly heat it. It’s a good idea to keep the lid on so the milk doesn’t skin as it gets hot.

Every so often use the whisk to stir the milk so it heats more evenly. Check the temperature each time. You want the milk to reach 175 to 185 degrees.

Once the milk is hot, whisk in the vinegar. I find a half cup per gallon works for me. This, too, is lenient. You can add a bit more to set the milk harder.

You should see the milk turn grainy as the vinegar and milk mix. The grains can vary in size from tiny to quarter inch or larger. They stick to the whisk so you can see them. You should see the milk separate into curds and whey.

When I made lemon cheesecake from the cheese, I set the milk with lemon juice. It takes more than the vinegar and has a lower yield.

Turn off the heat. Put the lid on the pot. Let the pot sit and cool down.

vinegar set ricotta goat cheese
Unlike many cheeses, the amount of milk used for vinegar set ricotta cheese is highly variable. As I wanted new pictures for this post, I made a big saucepan of cheese to add to the cheese I made a couple of days ago to make enchiladas. Just adjust the amount of vinegar added. This is a very bland cheese so added spices and herbs really dress it up to suit whatever recipe you are making. For the enchiladas I added chopped garlic chives. Chopped onion and peppers work well too. I prefer using the vinegar set ricotta cheese to cream cheese in most recipes as I can add flavors to it easily. It can be used like cottage cheese. This is a very versatile cheese.

Rescuing Your Cheese

The curds settle into a soft mass. Use the colander to separate the curds and whey. You can keep the whey to use for pasta or even feed your goats. You can water the grass.

If the curds are very fine, line the colander with nylon netting. I prefer this to cheesecloth as the weave is fixed and it is very easy to wash. The small curds drain very slowly and the resulting cheese will spoil faster.

Larger curds can be rolled around in the colander to drain out as much of the whey as you can.

Either way, refrigerate the curds. Then start planning those lasagnas, quiches, cheesecakes and more to use up your goat cheese.

cover for "Goat Games" by Karen GoatKeeper

There are more cheese recipes in “Goat Games”. Pumpkin cheesecake is one of the recipes in “The Pumpkin Project”.

Next week will be a mozzarella type cheese.

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Latest From High Reaches

Time For Cheese Again

Three kids are sold and gone. The two wethers and two bucks are left and still gorging on milk. But there is enough leftover now and it’s time for cheese again.

As with so many things, I no longer do a lot of cheese or kinds of cheese. Every Monday I do a small batch of a mozzarella type. Occasionally I do the vinegar set ricotta

Milk Is the Beginning

Most cheese directions begin in the kitchen. I prefer to start in the milk room as cheese actually begins with milk.

Ozark summers bring warm mornings. These in turn sour milk. This does not make good cheese or table milk for that matter.

Some years back I tried to come up with a way for cool my milk before it even made it into the kitchen. This matters as warm milk takes a long time to cool down in the refrigerator and makes it work harder, not a good thing with older refrigerators in a hot kitchen.

My solution was to freeze a juice bottle of water. This is placed in the milk tote when I go out. The warm milk cools a lot as the ice melts inside the bottle.

When you try this, remember water expands about ten percent when it freezes, so leave room in the bottle. Use a thicker plastic juice bottle, 20 ounce. Tighten the lid securely.

goats are milking, time for cheese again
It’s easy to think cheese recipes only matter in the kitchen. Cheese actually begins in the barn. My hard working (Ha!) Nubian does come in at milking time to gobble up their grain and other treats. Pieces of apple, corn husks, lettuce leaves and other things are appreciated. Pumpkin and squash pieces are big favorites. In return I get milk from which I can make cheese.

Pasteurizing

I made this mistake once. My cheese never set. If you do pasteurize, you will need starters for the milk to replace what the heat killed.

My cheese is made from raw milk. Yes, raw milk can carry diseases. However, I know my goats and don’t use milk from goats feeling ill.

Another check is how long the milk stays good in the refrigerator. Mine stays good for over a week. I keep my equipment clean, my glass bottles clean and put the milk up as soon as I get in from the milk room.

Now It’s Time for Cheese Again

Next week I’ll post about making fresh milk ricotta. I don’t make big batches any more so I’ll start with three quarts of fresh milk, just in from the milk room.

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Cottontail Rabbit Invasion

As I finished milking the other evening, I noticed a cottontail rabbit eating grass. That was a bit unusual, but I have no barn cat right now.

This rabbit didn’t concern me until it calmly hopped over to my garden fence. My garden is fenced with two by four welded wire. The rabbit slipped through and into the garden.

My garden does not need a hungry rabbit. I charged in. The rabbit left.

Cottontail rabbit invasion
People tell me the cottontail rabbit invasion is widespread in this part of the Ozarks. There are numerous rabbits near my garden and in the back yard. This may bring the gray foxes back.

Raising Rabbits

Never confuse a cottontail rabbit with a domestic rabbit. All the domestic rabbit breeds trace back to European rabbits. None trace back to the native rabbits.

Years ago I had a commercial rabbitry. Even more years before that my family raised rabbits. They make good pets and good dinner.

My commercial rabbitry had around a hundred does divided into eight sections. Each week one section got bred, another section got nesting boxes and another had their little ones weaned.

Does did move between sections from time to time for various reasons so they were mixed up. My father came up with a great system to keep track of them.

I bought clothes pins. They were painted red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, black and white. One side was all colored, the other half. They were clipped to the feeders.

When I walked down the aisles, the clothes pins told me which section the doe was in. If she was bred, the half side was out. If she had babies, the full side showed.

Rabbit Food?
My Savoy cabbages look great. If the cottontail rabbits make it into the garden, they may disappear.

Cottontail Rabbit

Chicken wire got stretched across over the garden fence. That seemed to work as nothing seemed to get eaten.

The number of rabbits eating the grass kept increasing. Four were there one morning. I got nervous.

Then the few beets still in the garden got eaten. Was it the rabbits? If it was, the rabbits had gone around the garden to the far side. Then again, I’d seen a chipmunk zip out the fence there and they eat gardens too.

Chicken wire is going up around the garden fence and on the gates. The rabbits and chipmunks can eat outside the garden.

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Sweet Elderberry

Walking along the road the last few days, a sweet fragrance drifts by or hangs in the air. There are several sources including persimmon trees and prairie roses, but the scent of sweet elderberry is the strongest.

Elderberry plants could almost be classed as shrubs, at least the older ones. They are perennials. Unless the road crew comes by, the stems overwinter and sprout new leaves in the spring along with new canes that shoot up around them.

Hard to Miss

Even out of range of the sweet elderberry perfume, an elderberry in bloom is difficult to miss. The canes are up to six feet tall with huge umbels of waxy white flowers. Large compound leaves hanging on long petioles jut off from the canes.

The plants seem to prefer open areas near wet areas. Roadsides and edges of pastures are prime places to look for them.

sweet elderberry flowers
This elderberry grows behind the mailbox. It makes trips to get the mail a sweet experience while the flowers are open. Later the berries will grow and ripen, perfect for a few snacks, although the ripe berries don’t seem to have much flavor.

The New Miracle Plant

People seem to like think eating one special thing will cure all that ails them. Sweet elderberry is a recent target.

The berries are small, barely a quarter inch across and haven’t much flavor in my opinion. But these same berries are now being farmed, gathered from wild plants, juiced and sold for high prices as miracle plants.

Perhaps ingesting this juice will help some people. The true benefactors of this new interest are the pollinators, provided the fields aren’t sprayed.

Eating a sensible diet and getting plenty of exercise is a better way to better health. Of course, that means giving up most caffeine, alcohol, sugar and white flour which is difficult. A side benefit is losing weight and feeling better.

Place to Start

In Missouri there are plenty of Conservation Areas with walking trails. Park the wheels, put on a hat and go walking. Right now, you can follow the sweet elderberry scent along some of those trails.

Meet other Ozark plants in Exploring the Ozark Hills.

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Forever Mullein

In 1849 a professor at Mishigan State University got curious. Farmers kept asking him how long weed seeds remained viable in the soil. Little did he suspect his long acquaintance with forever mullein.

In my own garden weeds are a constant battle. I can pull every one in a given area, come back in a couple of weeks to find weeds covering the same area.

forever mullein plants
Mullein is a biennial. The first year a rosette of hairy gray-green leaves tries to hide down in the grass. The second year the leaves get huge as the spire rises up, sometimes branching to make a candelabra up to six feet tall. The flower spike opens flowers more-or-less in circular arrays moving from the base to the top.

Weed Seed Bank

Whenever a weed succeeds in producing and dropping seeds, they join others hiding in the soil. These wait, sometimes for years, for conditions to be right. Then they germinate.

Desert wildflowers are a good example of this. For years an area of desert may go without rain. No wildflowers grow.

Right after a rain, the desert blooms as seeds hiding in the soil germinate. People come for miles to see the array of flowers covering what is usually bare dirt.

Longevity Experiment

This professor devised an experiment to find out how long weed seeds would survive in the soil. He put damp soil in over twenty glass bottles. Seeds from twenty-three different common weeds were collected and fifty of each were added to this soil. Then he buried them in a container outside.

For several years the professor took out one bottle and germinated the weed seeds. Another professor took over the experiment leaving years between when a bottle would be dug up.

Fewer and fewer kinds of weed seeds germinated. After 142 years, a bottle was dug up. The seeds were coddled in an attempt to germinate them. Only one kind still does, the forever mullein.

forever mullein flowers
Called a weed, the forever mullein has lovely yellow flowers overnight into the morning. They are primarily moth pollinated to produce those long lived seeds.

Weed Free Hopes

Most of the common weed seeds only survived a few years. If I can keep any new weed seeds from being added to my soil for five years, most of my weeding problems would be over.

One weed would remain, the forever mullein.

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My Carduan World

Sitting at my computer now I am being serenaded by gray tree frogs. In the distance are several different birds settling on their roosts. Later on the whip-poor-will will call. This will be the Carduan world.

A thunderstorm went through earlier this evening. Storms are common during an Ozark spring. Ice and snow fall in February, maybe March. Rain in March and April. Thunderstorms mark the change from spring to summer in late April and May. This will be the Carduan world.

Being Complacent

There are lots of interactions going on between the nine Carduans. It is easy to focus my writing on these and toss in a storm now and then. But that isn’t real. It’s being lazy, being complacent, not thinking about the natural world.

Putting the natural world into the Carduan world will take outlining the various weeks. They do have approximate dates assigned in the outline I already have. Now I need to do a second outline with the weather, plant blooming, animal appearances, sounds that might occur during each of those weeks.

Dandelions food on Carduan world
One of the first edible plants easy to find in the spring is the dandelion. Although it is an import from Europe and occasional near creeks and pasture edges, it could be found by the Carduans. Both the flowers and leaves are edible. The root can be roasted and used for a coffee substitute.

How do I Know These?

That is the good thing about setting Cardua in an Ozark ravine. I’ve walked ravines, pastures, explored creeks, watched various storms and their aftermaths for thirty years.

No, I don’t know everything that happens. No one does. But I can add enough of these to make the Carduan world seem real. And that matters to me and, I hope, to readers of this massive work once it gets done.

When will “The Carduan Chronicles” be done?

I am impatient to see this story finally get written. It has been several years in the planning, drafting, rewriting and editing. I want to move on to other projects.

However, I want these books, and I find there will be four of them, to be right. That takes time. I’m hoping the first one about Ship Nineteen will be done and out this fall. The one on Ship Eighteen should be ready about the same time.

This depends on my writing time and getting the Carduan world right.

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Purple Milkweed Blooming

Missouri is home to a wide variety of milkweeds that spread their blooms over the warm months. The purple milkweed blooming along the roads and in the edges of the woods is the first of the milkweed parade.

No Milkweeds Means No Monarchs

This is what the Missouri Conservation Department keeps saying. And it is true as milkweeds are the only plants their caterpillars feed on.

Those milkweeds are fewer in number every year as the places where they grow are plowed under, sprayed and mowed. They have no modern economic value, so they are destroyed with little thought for the consequences.

butterflies love purple milkweed blooming
Butterfly gardens, especially those with milkweeds are popular for monarch butterflies. Purple milkweed, Asclepias purpurescens, is a good choice for semi shade. It is a lovely plant and very popular with butterflies, wasps, bumblebees. clearwing hawkmoths and more.

Valuable Milkweeds

Although the big push to grow milkweeds is for the monarchs, there are other reasons too. An easy dozen kinds of insects visit the flowers.

Purple milkweed blooming is a magnet. Frittilary butterflies were tromping around drinking nectar. Dodging their feet were wasps, bumblebees and bees. Another visitor is the clearwing hawkmoth that hovers like an hummingbird.

Flower or crab spiders ambush prey on the flowers. Various beetles move in. The plants attract aphids and milkweed bugs.

Perennials

Because milkweeds are perennials, they are great for erosion control. Some are very showy like the popular butterfly weed. Others need lots of space like the common milkweed that spreads into a patch. Most like lots of sun.

A huge patch of purple milkweed blooming is gorgeous. The clouds of orange, brown, yellow, white, purple, black and more butterflies shifting between the upright umbels add to the beauty.

cover for "Missouri's Milkweeds, Milkvines and Pipevines" by Dr. Richard E. Rintz
A guidebook and more to the milkweeds, milkvines and pipevines known to grow in Missouri.

Growing Places

I see purple milkweed blooming in places with some shade and moisture. The common milkweed does well in road ditches, sometimes reaching six feet fall or more. Butterfly weed likes it drier and sunnier. It is rarely over two feet tall. Water gardens or the edges of ponds and lakes is favored by pink swamp milkweed.

Green, whorled and spider milkweeds are easy to grow too. They like dry and sunny places.

Butterfly gardens need milkweeds.

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Storm Reports

Lately the news has lots of storm reports. One of my latest reading books was “A Storm Too Soon” by Michael J. Tougias about a storm to rival the reports.

This excellent nonfiction thriller follows three sailors on a sailboat crossing the Atlantic. They left a month before hurricane season, but two low pressures joined forces to create a hurricane.

When the sailboat sinks, the Coast Guard rescue units attempt to find the life raft and rescue the sailors. There are photographs in the book of the monstrous eighty foot tall waves.

Local Storm Reports

Storms much tamer than the one in the book have been passing through the Ozarks lately. One caused a flash flood. Most drop an inch or less of rain, maybe have some lightning and thunder and big winds.

The frequency can be a nuisance. The grass loves the rain and warm weather. The mower doesn’t mind the warm weather, but doesn’t like the rain or resulting wet grass. Barn cleaning is no fun in wet weather either, especially rain as the goats are in the way.

I’ve written about Ozark storms in both “Exploring the Ozark Hills” and “My Ozark Home”. The ones in recent years are different as they are usually small rains or big downpours.

cover for "Exploring the Ozark Hills" by Karen GoatKeeper
Several of the nature essays in this book concern storms, rain, ice and snow, and the results of those storms.

Gardens and Rain

With summer plants and seeds going into the garden, the frequent small rains are very helpful. I put in the squash seeds, let the rain water them in and watch the seedlings appear a few days later. Tomatoes and peppers love the rain too.

One problem has come up. The flash flood filled in the creek pool I use for water during dry times with gravel.

That is another aspect of the new weather patterns. A wet time is followed by a dry one that borders on drought before the next wet cycle begins.

The gravel problem is one of many to solve. For the present I will watch the storm reports.

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My Favorite Tree

While browsing through the picture book shelves, I came across “My Favorite Tree” by Diane Iverson. This isn’t really a picture book for young children, but a book about trees for older children.

Each two page spread has one picture book side with something about why the children in the picture like that particular kind of tree. The other page gives the name, description, range map, trivia and champion tree.

Looking at Trees

Now, I like trees. They have lovely shapes. Their shade is very welcome on hot days. Some have beautiful flowers and great fruit.

My problem with trees is how big they are. I can’t even reach the lowest branches of most trees. Climbing them has never been something I want to do.

My favorite tree in late spring is the dogwood
After the wild plums turn white with flowers and the redbuds don their pink slippers, the dogwood spreads its white clouds in the woods.

Tree Appreciation

A newspaper article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch reiterated something I also read about in Science News. Trees are very valuable in the city.

Trees cut noise, absorb pollution, cool hot temperatures and make people feel better. Cities should find ways to plant more trees. The suggestion for St. Louis was to plant trees on some of the abandoned house lots after removing the condemned structures. Most cities have such places and a small neighborhood park would increase property values for surrounding houses.

Which is My Favorite Tree?

As I read through “My Favorite Tree”, I asked this question. So many of the trees listed were ones I was familiar with. The pages brought back many memories.

Standing in the midst of a redwood grove. Sniffing pine trees for the scent of vanilla as Ponderosa Pines smell of vanilla and Jeffery Pines don’t. Fir forests looking like Christmas in a blanket of snow. Saguaros standing like sentries across the desert. Stopping under a Joshua Tree to take a picture of it and my new car.

Other trees are familiar ones around my home. Redbuds with their pink slippers that taste nutty. Dogwoods spreading white clouds in the woods. Persimmons and sycamores giving fruit and leaves to tempt the goats. Gathering black walnuts.

My answer really was that it depends on which tree I am focusing on at that time. In spite of their great height towering over me, I like trees.

white oak in winter
One of the interesting sights in winter are the shapes of the various trees now bereft of leaves. Different kinds of trees have different shapes. Trees growing close together change their shapes to compliment each other.

Using This Book

The trees listed are from many places and no one will see them all close to home. But the book offers a way to entice children outdoors to take a look at these mighty neighbors, learn their names and find out more about them.