You can use a natural bristle brush to apply cheese wax to cheese for aging. The temperature of the wax should be about 220°F to kill any mold spores on the surface of the cheese. Be careful not to overheat the wax because it is flammable. Reduce the heat before applying the second coat of wax.
Traditional Cheddar
After years of tweaking our own version of a cheese that tastes likes cheddar, we attended a cheese-making workshop with Jim Wallace, technical advisor for New England Cheesemaking Supply. Jim’s original recipe uses 6 gallons of milk, but we reduced it to 2 gallons for a more manageable size, both in terms of milk needed and final weight of cheese.
Makes 2 pounds.
2 gallons goat milk
mesophilic culture
½ teaspoon liquid rennet
cheese salt
1. Heat the milk to 86°F and add the culture. Stir for 1 minute, and let the milk ripen for 1 hour. Add the rennet and stir for another minute. The target flocculation is 18 minutes. Multiply by a factor of 2.5 to determine the waiting time before cutting the curds. After achieving a clean break, cut the curds into ½-inch pieces. Stir the curds gently for 15 minutes, and then raise the temperature 2 degrees every 5 minutes to 102°F. Hold the temperature at 102°F and continue stirring for 30 minutes. Pour the curds into a cheesecloth-lined colander and wrap the curds tightly in the cheesecloth.
2. To “cheddar,” put the colander into an insulated picnic cooler with three 1-quart bottles of hot tap water to maintain a warm temperature in the cooler. Place a small cutting board across the top of the wrapped curds in the colander, and place a 1-quart bottle of hot water on top of the cutting board as a weight. After 30 minutes, flip the curd mass, and add another bottle on top of the cutting board to increase the weight. After another 30 minutes, flip the curd mass again and return the two bottles on top as weight.
3. After 90 minutes in the cooler, the curds will have formed into a solid mass. Weigh the curd mass, and then tear it into ½-inch pieces. Gradually add an amount of salt calculated at 2 percent of the weight of the curd mass, and mix it into the curds. Put the curds into a cheesecloth-lined press and press at 35 pounds for 1 hour. Remove, rewrap, flip, and press at 50 pounds for 2 hours. And finally, remove, rewrap, flip, and press at 50 pounds for 24 hours.
4. Place the cheese on a cheese mat to dry in the cave for a few days, and then add two coats of wax. The cheese should be stored at a temperature in the range of 50–55°F. As with other cheddars, the flavor should improve with age.
CHAPTER 17
MEAT
It wasn’t that long ago that I said I could never eat goat meat. My goats were like pets to me. Each one had a name and a personality, just like my cats and dogs do. And then there was Hercules. He was a LaMancha buck that was especially skilled at getting over fences. He could go over a livestock panel, as well as a five-foot-high wooden fence. Twice I caught him in a pasture with my Nigerian Dwarf does.
After he slipped into the doe pasture the first time, I moved him to a paddock almost a quarter of a mile from the does, but he jumped the fence and beat me back to the barn. After the second time he joined the does, I decided he had to go, so I posted a “for sale” advertisement online and in the state dairy goat newsletter. No takers. Finally, I decided that I would castrate him and train him as a cart wether so that he could help us haul firewood and plow the garden and things like that. Unfortunately, even after he had no hormonal motivation to join the does, he still wanted to go wherever his heart desired. He began crushing the woven wire fences all around the farm, and when we tried to string electric wire across the top, he didn’t care. He then started to teach his bad habits to my two Nigerian Dwarf wethers.
I was worried that he would damage the fence and that coyotes would get into the pasture before we realized there was a breech. I was also worried that the wethers would damage the fence, letting all of the does out and exposing them to all sorts of predators as well as to cars. Eventually, I saw no option other than to butcher the three wethers, so we took them to be processed professionally. I quickly learned that although old goat may not taste too bad, it causes terrible indigestion. We tried many recipes, and everyone always ended up with indigestion for several hours after eating the meat. We finally gave up and fed the rest of the meat to our livestock guardian dogs.
As it turned out, that experience was my introduction to raising goats as meat animals. The next year, we were blessed with 29 bucklings. One of the things I had always liked about Nigerian Dwarves was how easy it was to sell them as pets, pasture ornaments, or weed eaters. However, most years we would have only a dozen or so bucklings. Twenty of the bucklings eventually sold, leaving us with nine as we headed into fall. We made a plan to butcher them ourselves and eat them. My husband butchered one in October, which we ate, but we never got around to butchering more. When spring came, I decided to offer them at a discount to people who were looking for pets, but everyone wanted babies, even if they cost more than the yearlings.
As summer came, we headed into a drought. I had always believed that none of our animals would ever go hungry because we had 32 acres of pasture and woods and I was careful to not overstock. But after a couple of months with no rain, there was no grass left. I called my usual hay suppliers, even though I didn’t expect good news. No one near me had any hay. I eventually wound up buying some from out of state. The forecast for the drought was not good, and I realized we had eight wethers that were not likely to ever sell as pets, so we decided to butcher them, as well as three mature bucks that we really didn’t need as breeding animals. Although I originally didn’t plan to eat our goats, I have come to realize that just as the goat milk nourishes us, the meat can too.
Meat Quality
Goat meat, called chevon in France or cabrito in Mexico when talking about meat from a kid, is lower in fat than beef, pork, lamb, or chicken, making it very healthy. Meat from younger goats is preferred, and because a doeling has a future as a milker, we are usually talking about a buckling being used for meat. It is generally thought that the best time to butcher wethers is from four to twelve months of age, but there is disagreement when talking about bucks. As intact bucks get older, they are more likely to start peeing on themselves and developing a bucky odor, which means the meat could have an unpleasant flavor or aroma. However, intact bucks grow considerably faster than wethers, which means there is more meat to be had from a buck at a younger age. On the other hand, if a castrated kid is able to nurse longer, the weight gain from nursing may compensate for the weight loss usually associated with castration. Our Nigerian wethers, which continue to nurse until they are butchered, have ranged from about 30 pounds hanging weight at 8 months to about 40 pounds at a year of age.
Of course you can butcher animals of any age, but the quality of the meat changes. My local meat processor says that any meat from an animal over three years of age will not be appetizing to those of us who didn’t grow up eating older goats.
Butchering
If you are new to a homesteading lifestyle, you may have the same reluctance to butcher your animals that I did when we got started. But when you breed goats every year to produce milk, you have to do something with the kids. This doesn’t mean you have to butcher them yourself or eat them. You can avoid butchering by selling the extra wethers or bucks live for slaughter. The demand for goat meat in North America exceeds supply, and each year goat meat is imported.
Commercial Services
There are alternatives to butchering goats yourself. A local custom meat processing plant will butcher animals for you. This involves transporting the animals to the plant, which can be stressful for them, so it is best to take more than one. Just as goats are happier living with friends, they are also happier going on a trip with a friend or two. And the quality of the meat is said to be better when the animals are not stressed at slaughter time.
Mobile butchering services are ideal because the goats do not need to leave home, which reduces their stress e
ven more. A mobile meat processor is a USDA-inspected facility that is housed in a semi-trailer, which brings the slaughterhouse to your farm. Unfortunately, these are a fairly new development and not available in all areas, but their popularity is growing.
Home Butchering
Some people prefer butchering at home because the animals are never stressed by being taken somewhere strange at the end of their life. The commonly used methods of slaughtering animals at home are to shoot a goat in the head or to cut the jugular vein in the throat. The recommended approach for shooting an animal is to shoot at the center of an imaginary X between the goat’s eyes and ears. After shooting, the goat will fall down and its body will jerk. This movement is natural. An animal shot in the pasture as it is grazing will have no idea that anything is amiss.
Cutting the jugular vein and “bleeding out” an animal is the other method of slaughter commonly used in home butchering, and some religions require this method be used. Some people say it is less traumatic for the goat than shooting.
How Much Meat to Expect
About 50 percent of the goat’s live weight remains after butchering and removing all the nonedible parts. This is known as “hanging weight,” and it is not all meat. When we butchered a 51-pound Nigerian wether, we decided to debone it. The result was 14 pounds of bones and 14 pounds of meat. A standard breed goat will probably have a live weight of 80–100 pounds before a buck or wether reaches a year of age, which would yield a 40-to 50-pound hanging weight.
On their farm in Ohio, Julie Gorrell’s husband slaughters kosher. The knife blade is sharp and free of any nicks. “In one smooth stroke, he slits from one ear to the other,” she explains. “He usually does it while they are calmly grazing beside him. He always likes to keep the animal calm and feeling cared for until their last breath. No ‘stringing them up by the feet’ while they are alive like I’ve heard some people talk about who want to buy goats to slaughter. We don’t sell to those people.”
Learning to butcher is easier if you start with a smaller animal because it is simply easier to handle, and you don’t need a large work surface. You might want to limit your first attempt to a goat that is small enough to cut up on your kitchen counter. As with many aspects of raising goats, it is a good idea to have an experienced person help you the first time you butcher a goat. Experience butchering deer or sheep is helpful because the anatomy of these animals is similar to that of goats. The first few times my husband took animals to our local processing facility, he watched them kill, remove the head and skin, and eviscerate. At that point, the carcass is put into a cooler for three or four days before they cut it up. Because goats have very little fat on them, they do not benefit from long aging.
I am totally in favor of home slaughter. Less stress, cheaper, cleaner. Remember, if your meat is cleaned elsewhere, you are relying on someone else to keep your meat from being contaminated by the built-up bacteria of a slaughterhouse and any disease that may be present from all the other animals that have gone before your animals. My husband was a truck driver and hauled cattle on a large scale, so we know how many cattle that are sick get slaughtered, and we do not want our meat cleaned in a place like that.
We killed two bucks this year. They were walked calmly out behind a building far away from the herd (we never do this in sight of the herd!), told bye, and petted and hugged. They had no fear that anything was wrong. We respect their lives and appreciate the sacrifice of each one to provide for our family. A sharp knife to the jugular does seem best to us. It is very Biblical, quick, and clean. They are then hung, drained, and cleaned like deer. Pelts are stretched out, scraped, salted, and saved, not wasted. They are beautiful and serve to remind us of the good times we shared with animals that we loved and respected and of the sacrifice made by our animals to provide for our needs. Any death should be sad, but the death of an animal you know seems sadder than the death of one you’ve never seen. We really should feel that sad about all the animals we consume, but it just doesn’t seem so bad when we pick up those packs of processed meat at the store.
I guess what I am trying to say is that slaughtering an animal should be a hard thing to do because that means we care, but if we are going to eat meat, it should also be something we are willing to do. Sometimes we benefit most from the things that are the hardest. Slaughtering is difficult, but it will provide our families with the healthiest meat we could possibly give them and, I promise you, the best tasting meat you have ever had.
— MARGARET LANGLEY, Mobile, Alabama
Leather
If we are going to take the life of one of our animals, I feel that no part of the animal should go to waste. In addition to making bone broth and feeding the raw bones of our butchered goats to our livestock guardian dogs, we keep the skins to be tanned and used as leather. You can purchase home tanning kits to tan the skins. But if you are not quite ready to learn butchering or tanning, you can ask your processor to save the skins for you, and you can send them to a tannery. Skins need to be dried before being sent to a tannery. After skinning the hide off the animal, the fat should be scraped off the inside of the hide using something blunt like the side of a spoon. Using a knife can result in accidentally cutting through the hide. Once you have removed the fat, salt the hide heavily. My rule of thumb is that if flies are attracted to the hide, I haven’t used enough salt. Within a couple of weeks, the hide should be dry enough to ship to a tannery. Depending on what you want to make with the leather, the hide can be tanned with the hair on or the hair removed.
After the hide is dried but before it is tanned, it is raw-hide, and although it can bend, folding it could result in cracking. Keep this in mind when packaging to ship to a tannery. The tannery can split a thick hide from an older animal into top grain and suede for garments. Leather from a young goat is very thin and works well for garments. Few people today realize that “kid gloves” refers to gloves that are made from the skin of a young goat. Thicker skin from an older goat could be used to make moccasins. Leatherworking equipment and patterns for making leather accessories can be found online.
After a week or two, the skin will be completely dry and inflexible. It is now ready to be tanned.
Don’t get caught up in creating perfect cuts of meat when you are butchering. If you don’t have a bone saw and other butchering equipment, it is entirely acceptable after skinning a goat simply to cut all the meat off the bones to create fillets, small boneless roasts, stew meat, and ground meat. The meat that runs along the spine is the most tender and makes delicious little medallions for stir-frying. You can give the raw bones to your livestock guardian dog. In fact, raw bones are safer for your dog than cooked ones, which can splinter and cause intestinal damage.
Cooking
If you butcher at home, it is unlikely that you have a commercial cooler to hang an entire carcass in to age before cutting it up. You can, however, cut up the meat and store it in your refrigerator for a few days before cooking. Like most meats, the meat from a younger goat has a milder flavor, will be tenderer, and will be able to handle higher heat cooking methods, such as grilling. Meat from an older animal will need to be marinated and cooked more slowly over a lower heat. Keep in mind that goat meat is the most low-fat meat available, which means it is easy to overcook it and dry it out.
Of course, you can substitute goat meat for beef or lamb in any of your favorite recipes, but the following recipes complement goat meat’s unique flavor.
Indian Goat and Sweet Potatoes
Serves 4.
1 pound ground goat meat
2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon oil
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons garam masala
1 cup goat milk yogurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 clove garlic, crushed
1. Chop the sweet potatoes into 1-inch cubes. Put them into a 2-quart pot and cover them wit
h water. Boil the sweet potatoes for 20 minutes or until a fork inserted into a cube breaks it in half easily.
2. Chop the onion and begin browning it in oil. Add the ground goat, salt, coriander, and garam masala. Stir the meat frequently to prevent burning until it is cooked thoroughly.
3. Add the cooked sweet potatoes to the pan, and stir the cubes into the meat mixture.
4. In a bowl, mix together the yogurt, lemon juice, and garlic.
To serve, put the meat and sweet potato mixture on a plate and drizzle it with the yogurt sauce.
Goat Goulash
Serves 8.
2 pounds goat stew meat
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons oil
1 onion, sliced
1 pound carrots, sliced
2 tablespoons unbleached flour
1 cup goat milk
1 cup water
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Put 1 tablespoon of oil in a 5-quart cast-iron Dutch oven. Add the stew meat and set on medium heat to brown. Add garlic cloves, paprika, cayenne, and salt to the meat and stir. After 5 minutes, add the onion and carrots to the pan, and continue stirring to prevent burning. Cook for 10 minutes and then remove the pan from the heat.
Raising Goats Naturally Page 31